a

4\

SHADOWS

THE OLD BOOKSELLERS.

BY CHARLES KNIGHT.

" Now learning itself is a trade. A man goes to a bookseller, and
gets what he am. We have done with patronage. In the infancy
of learning, we find some great man praised for it. This diffused it
among others. When it becomes general, an author leaves the great,
and applies to the multitude." — JOHNSON, in 1773.

LONDON:
BELL AND DALDY, 186, FLEET STREET.

18G5.

The riyht of Translation is reseiixd.

LONDON : PKISTED BY W. CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET,
AND CHARING CROSS .

TO

GEORGE LILLIE CRAIK,

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE, QUEES'S COLLEGE, BELFAST,

Q$ a ^Itmorial of a Jfrimbsljijj

WHICH COMMENCED NEARLY FORTY YEARS AGO,

IN OUR MUTUAL DESIRE TO MAKE KNOWLEDGE A COMMON
POSSESSION,

INSTEAD OF AN EXCLUSIVE PROPERTY,

I INSCRIBE, WITH THE TRUEST REGARD, THESE SHADOWS
OF A PAST AGE OF LETTERS.

CHAELES KNIGHT.

2040168

INTBODUCTION.

PEOPOSEin this little work to attempt
some delineations of a series of person-
ages whose doings may, upon a hasty
view, appear to have too much of -a com-
mercial character to be generally interesting. At
any rate they may seem more fitted for the valuable
but somewhat dry details of bibliography, than to be
included under a title which may indicate something
as much akin to fiction as to fact. In 1851 and 1852
I wrote for Mr. Dickens's 'Household Words' a series
of sketches under the title of ' Shadows ; ' by which
title I sought to indicate their half ideal, half real,
character. Those ' Shadows ' had for the most part
the interest which belongs to romance as well as to
history. The subjects of the present outlines, with a
few exceptions, are little fitted for imaginative pictures
of startling adventures, or of curious details of domestic
life. But they have another sort of interest. They
flit before me, ever accompanied with shadows of many
of the immortals of literature. They are obscure and
ill-defined until the period of the Eestoration ; but

vi INTRODUCTION.

\

when a reading public is beginning to be formed,
they become something more than names upon title-
pages. As they walk the earth, from the middle of the
seventeenth century to the end of the eighteenth, I
see a band who, during five generations, have been
carrying forward the great work of national enlighten-
ment, sometimes, indeed, in a narrow and mercenary
spirit, but not unfrequently in a spirit far above that
of mere money-getting. I am not about to write
their biographies. They will "come like shadows, so
depart;" but as they pass over the stage, they will
tell something like a connected story of literary pro-
gress, in its commercial relations, up to a time when
my own experience, imperfect as it was, enabled me
to catch some glimpses of its modern aspects.

In the 'Typographical Antiquities' of Ames and
Herbert are recorded the names of three hundred
and fifty printers in England and Scotland, including
foreign printers engaged in producing books for Eng-
land, who flourished from the time of Caxton's press
to very nearly the beginning of the reign of James I. ;
that is, from 1474 to 1600. In the term "printers"
are included " booksellers." There was scarcely
any division of these, and of other cognate branches
of the book-trade, until very modern times. The
dealers in old books, the publishers of new books,
the book-printers, the printers of journals, and even

INTRODUCTION. vii

the book-auctioneers and printsellers, held a common
place in the registers of that ancient company which
had existence before the introduction of printing,
that of the " Stationers or Text-writers, who wrote and
sold all sorts of books then in use." The division of
employment amongst all those connected with " paper
and print," as capitalists, was of very slow growth,
as it was also amongst the labourers. The earliest
printers had to do everything for themselves ; to con-
struct the materials of their art, — types, presses,
and every other instrument and appliance. The art
of printing, in its rude beginnings, exhibits the
slowness with which the production of books had
become less rude. In the same way some of the
facts I shall have to record show how the commerce
of books gradually assumed less of a retail and
even peddling character. In a former work I said,
" the most difficult labour of the ancient printer, and
that which would necessarily constitute the great
distinction between one printer and another, had yet
to come. He had to sell his books when he had
manufactured them; for there was no division of
the labour of publisher and printer in those days."
The present volume will show how long that union
prevailed. The separation of the employments, per-
haps, diminished the risk of publishing; for the
printer-publisher might often be tempted into rash

viii INTRODUCTION.

adventures for the purpose of employing his presses.
On the other hand, the bookseller-proper loses the
manufacturer's profit, and must put a corresponding
price upon his commodity. Each system has its risks
and its advantages. But the risks of the publishing
branch of a large commerce will probably grow less
and less with its natural extension. The production
of dear books for the few is nearly obsolete; and the
results will follow the unvarying process of an earlier
period. "For some years after the invention of
printing, many of the ingenious, learned, and enter-
prising men who devoted themselves to the new art
which was to change the face of society, were ruined,
because they could not sell cheaply unless they
printed a considerable number of a book ; and there
were not readers enough to take off the stock which
they thus accumulated. In time, however, as the
facilities for acquiring knowledge which printing
afforded created many readers, the trade of printing
books became one of less general risk ; and dealers
in literature could afford more and more to dispense
with individual patronage, and rely upon the public
demand."* The transition period is most fruitful in
mistaken calculations as to the power of meeting a
large cost for original literature, by the sale of cheap
books for the many.

* ' William Caxton : a Biography.'

INTRODUCTION. ix

The general interest in "The Old Booksellers"
must be derived from that connexion with men of
letters, which was principally but not exclusively
confined to London. In this relation they furnish
many examples of ability, courage, perseverance, and,
I may add, honesty, in their calling, which ought to
neutralise the desire which still clings to some clever
writers to represent them as born to realise the converse
of Pharaoh's dream, that the fat kine should devour
the lean kine. If authors and publishers understood
their mutual interests there would be little distinction
between the lean kine and the fat, and they would
equally flourish on the same pastures. There was
formerly only one mode in which a writer could go
to the public without the intervention of what has
been called " the false medium." He might send out
proposals for subscription, and receive the full price
for each copy. Pope made -a fortune by his Subscrip-
tion books ; but Johnson saw that the time for that
mode of seeking the just rewards of authorship was
passing away. " He that asks subscription soon finds
that he has enemies. All who do not encourage him
defame him." The system came in time to be
regarded as undignified; and then the author left
the trading part of the operation to the^Publisher.
Though the rewards of literary labour might be less,
it was deemed better to take the broad road, which

X INTRODUCTION.

saved a writer from humiliation and commercial
liability.

When the system was established under which " a
man goes to a bookseller and gets what he can," it
seems to have worked satisfactorily to both authors
and publishers till the partnership became embittered
by mutual jealousies. The tradesman began to fancy
that he advanced all the capital, and had all the risk.
The man of letters, seeing that his expenditure of
skilled labour was also as real an advance as the cost
of paper and printing, demurred to the principle of
the material advance having a larger and a prior
remuneration than the intellectual. Thus it was, I
presume, that Campbell lauded the first Napoleon
because he had shot a bookseller ; and that Coleridge,
in his ' Devil's Thoughts,' wrote —

" He went into a rich bookseller's shop —

Quoth he, ' We are both of one college,
For I myself sate, like a cormorant, once,
Fast by the tree of knowledge.' "

The time is held to have arrived when authorship
is a more gainful calling than of yore ; and it may
therefore be concluded that " the false medium " has
become a juster standard of relative value.

Although the leading purpose of my little work is to
show Booksellers in their capacity of Publishers, it is
impossible to limit these Shadows of a past time to a

INTRODUCTION. xi

class whose especial business was to obtain an in-
terest in copyrights, to employ printers, and to sell
the books wholesale to which their names were affixed
on title-pages. There was no such class among the
Old Booksellers. Many had printing-offices; they
all kept shops ; some dealt not only in printed books
but in stationery : bookbinders were not unfrequent
amongst them ; and up to very recent times they were
the chief proprietors of newspapers. The area I have
to survey is therefore a large one ; but it is not neces-
sary that it should all be mapped out, or that I should
fill the background with a great many figures. One
principal Shadow will succeed another; and round
each of these, as a representative man of a particular
era, I may group many minor Shadows, in some
general relation to the times in which the leaders
and the rank-and-file marched on in their common
battle against ignorance.

My attempt to call up Shadows that might repre-
sent something of the substance of literary progress,
is far less complete than it might have been could I
have included in one volume other names that
naturally presented themselves. My plan for this
volume has not included the publishers of books
exclusively connected with the learned professions.
Others, although they have distinct relations with
books and bookselling, would more fitly form the

xii INTRODUCTION.

principal subjects of a separate series. For example :
Amongst the Printers, BOWYER, NICHOLS, BASKER-
VILLE, BULMER, FouLis, would claim a prominent
place, not forgetting WALPOLE and his Strawberry-
hill Press. BEWICK, the reviver of wood-engraving,
would open a new era of book illustration. .BOYDELL
would take the lead of the Printsellers. Of Book
Auctioneers, COCK, CHRISTIE, PATERSO.N, LEIGH,
EVANS, would suggest some curious details of Bib-
liomania. WOODFALL, ALMON, PERRY, WALTER,
STUART, as London Journalists, would be surrounded
by the most marked party men and political writers.
Provincial Journalists, such as GEORGE FAULKNER,
EAIKES, MONTGOMERY, BAINES, would demand more
than a cursory notice. CONSTABLE and MURRAY,
as representatives of the higher criticism of the
early years of the nineteenth century, might fitly
close these sketches.

I have endeavoured to make the present volume
tolerably complete as regards Old Booksellers con-
nected with general literature. Yet I am aware that
some names might have here claimed a place, as
belonging as much to the end of the eighteenth
century as to the beginning of the nineteenth.
Commencing with those who flourished in the days
when books were a luxury for the few, I have brought
this Series down to the times when a literary revo-

INTRODUCTION. xiii

1 ution was impending, in the necessity for providing
reading for a larger number. Another decade or
two thus largely added to the file of the booksellers.
"The trade" became an important branch of home
manufacture. Some of the founders of great modern
houses, such as the LONGMANS, the KIVINGTONS,
and the BALDWINS, have been briefly indicated. A
fuller notice would appear due to the place they and
their successors have filled in the commercial history
of our literature. I have naturally made those Sha-
dows more prominent that have well-defined personal
attributes. Perhaps I may be accused of having
inclined too mucfc towards those who were writers
as well as booksellers. Yet I cannot believe that
a taste for literature and a capacity for author-
ship should necessarily have been incompatible with
carrying on a trade in books, with all the sagacity
required for success in any commercial operation
involving some risk. There was an axiom amongst
some of the old vendors of literary wares, that a
bookseller should know nothing of books beyond
their title pages. Osbome, whom Johnson knocked
down wTith a folio, saying "lie there thou lump
of lead," was one of the tribe of whom ignorance
was the badge. Elmsley, honoured by Gibbon as
one of the most instructive of friends and com-
panions, was the type of many a one presented

xiv INTRODUCTION.

in these Shadows, of whom it could not have
been said,

" He guards the treasures which he can't enjoy."

Altogether, the deficiencies of the present volume
might urge me to undertake a second series.
Without pledging myself to such an attempt, I may
possibly employ my leisure in collecting some of the
necessary materials, which, like those upon which
the present volume has been based, have to be sought
for in odd corners, as well as in open spaces, acces-
sible to all.

Hampstead, October 19, 1865.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTEB PAGE

I. — THOMAS GUY 3

II. — JOHN DUNTON ' 24

III. — JACOB TONSON 48

IV. — THOMAS GENT, PRINTER, OF YORK 76

V. — THE TONSONS; LINTOTTS ; CURLL 100

VI. — SAMUEL RICHARDSON 125

VII. — WILLIAM HUTTON 154

VIII. — EDWARD CAVE; EALPH GRIFFITHS 171

IX. — ROBERT DODSLET 189

X. — ANDREW MILLAR ; CADELL AND STRAHAN .. 214

XI.— JOHN NEWBERY 233

XII. — THE CHAPTER COFFEE-HOUSE • • 247

EDWARD DILLY ; THOMAS DA VIES ; PETER
ELMSLEY ; THOMAS EVANS ; THOMAS PAYNE ;
THOMAS LONGMAN ; ROBERT BALDWIN.

XIII. — THE CHAPTER COFFEE-HOUSE (concluded) .. 262
JOHN RIVINGTON ; JOHN MURRAY ; THOMAS
BECKET ; JOSEPH JOHNSON ; JOHN BELL ; COOK ;
HARRISON. Note — Publishers of Johnson's
Poets.

XIV. — JAMES LACKINGTON 282

APPENDIX. — THE MARKET OF LITERATURE 301

INDEX .. 315

SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS.

SHADOWS, ETC.

CHAPTER I.

THOMAS GUY.

N commencing this volume with the story
of one who was more remarkable as a
great public benefactor than as a book-
seller, I have to bear in mind the especial
object of these Shadows, which I have stated to be
this, — to give something like a connected view of
literary progress, in its commercial relations, for about
a century. I have felt that there was some appa-
rent reason for what has been said of the founder of
Guy's Hospital, that " though claimed by booksellers
as one of their body, his property was acquired by
stockjobbing rather than by literature." * Nearly
all the popular accounts of Thomas Guy appear to
touch slightly upon his bookselling operations. In
Mr. Cunningham's excellent 'Handbook of London/
he is mentioned as "a bookseller in Lombard Street,
who is said to have made his fortune ostensibly by
the sale of Bibles, but more, it is thought, by pur-
chasing seamen's tickets, and by his great success in
the sale and transfer of stock in the memorable

* Knight's ' London,' vol. v. p. 372.

B2

SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. I.

South Sea year of 1720." The only contemporaneous
notice of Guy, the bookseller, is by John Dunton, in
a volume printed in 1705, of which book and its
author I shall have to speak fully : — " Mr. Thomas
Guy, in Lombard-street. He makes an eminent
figure in the Company of Stationers, having been
chosen Sheriff of London, and paid the fine, and
is now a Member of Parliament for Tamworth. He
entertains a very sincere respect for English liberty.
He is a man of strong reason, and can talk very
much to the purpose upon any subject you will pro-
pose. He is truly charitable, of which his Alms-
houses for the Poor are standing testimonies." The
nearest approach to an exact account of his career
was published within fourteen years after his death.
William Maitland prefixed a memoir of Guy to his
account of Guy's Hospital, published in his History of
London, in 1739. His narrative is far more precise
than the brief life in Nichols' ' Literary Anecdotes ; '
which memoir, in some respects, appears to show that
modern biography has its mythical periods as well
as ancient history. Guy's birthplace is very exactly
defined by Maitland. "He was born in the north-
east corner-house of Pritchard's Alley, (two doors east
of St. John's churchyard), in Fair Street, Horsley-
down." Amidst the changes of Old London, Fair
Street still exists, and has a due place in the Post
Office Guide to principal streets and places. It is
at the eastern extremity of Tooley Street, where
Horsleydown begins, and at a short distance from the
Thames. The Down where horses once grazed, and
where, probably, the child Thomas Guy once played,

CHAP. I. THOMAS GUY. 5

is now built over. The father of this boy was a
lighterman and coal-dealer, and it is most likely that
the young son of a man so occupied would be
familiar with the locality between Horsleydown and
London Bridge. One building seems to have lived
in his memory in connexion with early associations.
St. Thomas's Hospital, an old almonry, had been
bought by the citizens of London at the dissolution
of the religious houses, as a place of reception for
diseased people. It was fast falling into decay when
Thomas Guy looked upon it in his boyhood.

In what manner, or where, Thomas Guy was
educated in his earliest years, there appears to be no
record. When he was eight years old his father
died. His mother was a native of Tamworth. After
her husband's death she returned to that town, and
soon after married again; "however," says Maitland,
" she took care to have her children carefully educated,
and at a proper age put her son Thomas apprentice."
It would appear highly probable that he resided with
his mother at Tamworth, and was there educated. His
almshouses for the poor, mentioned by John Dunton,
in 1705, were in that town, and appear to have been
amongst his earliest charitable endowments. They
were for fourteen poor men and women, with pensions
for each occupier ; and what was and is a rare pro-
vision for the poor, they were furnished with a library.
Whether properly educated or not for the business of
a bookseller, for which some tincture of learning was
then required, Thomas Guy was bound apprentice in
September, 1660, for eight years, to Mr. John Clarke,
bookseller, in the porch of Mercer's Chapel. Although

6 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. I.

Mercer's Hall and Mercer's Chapel, in Cheapside,
were swept away by the fire of London in 1666,
Thomas served out his due time ; took up his livery
as a member of the Stationers' Company ; and having
seen Cheapside, the Poultry, and Cornhill in ruins,
found, in 1668, a little shop, newly built, in which he
could carry on his business, "near Stocks Market."
It requires some effort of imagination to credit that
the area upon which the Mansion-house now stands
was, for some centuries, a market for butchers and
fishmongers, deriving its name from the Stocks, which
were set up in the public thoroughfare for the
punishment of evil-doers. The whole place was swept
clean by the fire of 1666 ; and then the sheds and the
stalls found another local habitation by the side of
Fleet Ditch, and the Stocks Market became a pleasant
place for the sale of fruits and flowers, and was
planted on the east with rows of trees. The shop
of Guy was at the angle formed by Cornhill and
Lombard-street; and Maitland describes it as "the
little corner-house." Many persons now living will
remember this little corner-house, when it was
occupied by a noted lottery-office keeper, and scarcely
a passer-by failed to fancy the lucky number that
looked upon him with seductive eyes out of
that shop-window. When Guy settled here it must
have been a capital situation, for the ruins of
Sir Thomas Gresham's Exchange had been cleared
away, and new dwellings had sprung up with the
rapidity which the exigencies of trade never fail to
command. Within a year after our Thomas had
taken up his position, the second Exchange was

CHAP. I. THOMAS GUY. 7

opened with great pomp ; and it stood through all the
changes and revolutions of thrones and institutions,
of laws and commerce, till it was burnt down in 1838.
Placed thus in the very heart of the great commer-
cial operations of London, I can see the shadow of the
young bookseller as he sits in his shop amidst his small
stock, of the value of two hundred pounds, restless
at the want of occupation, and envying the great
merchant adventurers congregating in the Exchange,
whose ships brought the produce of every land to the
port of London. He spreads his new books and his
old upon a board in front of his window, now and
then soliciting the busy trader who glances at them
to buy Mr. Wingate's ' Arithmetic made Easy/ or
Mr. Eecord's ' Grounds of Art,' or Mr. Hawes's
' Short Arithmetic ; or, the Old and Tedious Way of
Numbering reduced to a New and Brief Method.'
He had divinity books, too, chiefly by the famous
controversialists who wrote against any approach to
the errors of the Church of Rome; and some by
their opponents, who were equally hostile to the
doctrines of the Non-conforming clergy. Theology
was by far the most exciting topic of those days.
Mr. Guy was a good Protestant, and as he sat in his
shop, too often unvisited by customers, he medi-
tated frequently upon the large trade that he could
command if it were in his power to offer godly people
Bibles well printed and cheap. ' There was no such
commodity to be had in England. All the arts asso-
ciated with the production of books were hampered
with privileges and restrictions, and were conse-
quently in a state very inferior to those practised in

SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. I.

some countries abroad under conditions of freedom.
In the days of Queen Elizabeth, the right of printing
Bibles and Testaments had been common to all
printers. Then privilege stepped in, and confined
the right to Her Majesty's printer. Similar privi-
leges were granted for law books, for the ABC and
the catechism, for psalters and primers, for Latin
books used in grammar-schools, for music books, and
for almanacs and prognostications. In 1575 the
Stationers' Company boldly remonstrated against
these privileges, maintaining that the privileged
books were sold at excessive prices. When Elizabeth
had Stuart successors, the privileges, which had been
affairs of Court jobbery, were maintained and ex-
tended by that dread of the power of the press which
seems inherent in despotic governments. By a decree
of the Star Chamber, in 1637, the number of type-
founders for the kingdom was limited to four. This
restriction was renewed under Charles II. As a
natural consequence the English types were not fit
for the production of any book besides the lowest
ballad or tract, and all the types used in the better
English printing-offices were imported from Holland.
The duty on paper was not imposed until 1711. But
as the impolitic restrictions upon any one branch of
an art have a necessary influence upon all its cognate
branches, the manufacture of paper in England had
become confined to the commonest sorts, chiefly used
for wrapping. In 1662 Fuller, in his ' Worthies,'
writing of Cambridgeshire, says : — " Paper is entered
as a manufacture of this county, because there are
mills nigh Sturbridge-fair, where paper was made in

CHAP. I. THOMAS GUY.

the memory of our fathers. And it seemeth to me a
proper conjunction, that seeing Cambridge yieldeth
so many good writers, Cambridgeshire should afford
paper unto them. Pity the making thereof is dis-
used, considering the vast sums yearly expended in
our land for paper out of Italy, France, and Ger-
many, that might be lessened were it made in our
nation." It was not only the inferior typographical
execution of the English Bibles upon which Thomas
Guy meditated, but he well knew that they were full
of many gross errors. In 1660 honest Fuller had
borne his testimony against this common defect,
in his tract of ' Mixt Contemplations.' Under the
quaint head of " Fye for Shame," he thus writes : —
" Considering with myself the causes of the growth
and increase of impiety and profaneness in our land,
amongst others this seemeth to me not the least,
viz., the late many false and erroneous impressions
of the Bible. Now know, what is but carelessness in
other books, is impiety in setting forth of the Bible."
Guy, as well as fellow booksellers, saw that a great
reformation was needed in this branch of their trade.
The patent of King's printer had continued in the
family of the Barkers, from the time of Queen Eliza-
beth to the end of 1665. A monopoly of a century
was little calculated to ensure excellence. The
Oxford Bibles were chiefly for the use of churches.
Maitland relates that at the time when Guy opened
his shop " the English Bibles printed in this kingdom
being very bad, both in the letter and paper,
occasioned divers of the booksellers in this city to
encourage the printing thereof in Holland, with

10 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. I.

curious types and fine paper, and imported vast
numbers of the same, to their no small advantage.
Mr. Guy, soon becoming acquainted with this profit-
able commerce, became a large dealer therein."
We may believe that Guy trusted that the Dutch
compositors would not print, as was printed in the
Bible of 1653, " Know ye not that the unrighteous
shall inherit the kingdom of God." He had learnt
from Mr. Selden's 'Table Talk,' that in a Bible
printed in the reign of Charles I., the word " not "
was left out in the seventh commandment, for which
typographical blunder the printers were heavily fined.
I can imagine that he would look carefully over the
Dutch printer's proofs. The issue of this project is
thus recorded: — "But this trade proving not only
very detrimental to the public revenue, but likewise
to the King's printer, all ways and means were
devised to quash the same ; which being vigorously
put in execution, the booksellers, by frequent
seizures and prosecutions, became so great sufferers,
that they judged a further pursuit thereof inconsistent
with their interest."

Mr. Guy was too prudent a man to persevere in a
contest against authorities. If the associated venders of
Dutch printed bibles had been able to stand out against
the privilege of the King's printer, there was another
powerful claimant to the monopoly of circulating the
sacred Scriptures. The University of Oxford asserted
its claim to provide the English people with Bibles and
Common Prayers. It is scarcely necessary for me to
enter upon the history of the restrictions under which
the two English universities and the King's printer

CHAP. I. THOMAS GUY. 1 1

have so long maintained their monopoly. Thomas
Guy was too sagacious a man to resist the pretensions
of powers so influential in the counsels of the Stuarts.
With a more than common share of ability and
perseverance, he finally induced the University of
Oxford to contract with him for an assignment of
their privilege. Furnishing himself with types from
Holland, he set about printing the English Bibles in
London, and established a trade which was far more
profitable than that of retailing books at the little
corner shop in Lombard Street.

The young bookseller in his first two or three years
of struggle has maintained his position by the most
scrupulous frugality. He has been his own servant,
having his homely dinner supplied from a cookshop,
and eating it upon his counter. In the scanty notices
of his career it is said that he thus dined hastily and
unexpensively, " with no other tablecloth than an old
newspaper." The relater of this anecdote must have
been more familiar with the newspapers of the time
of George III. than with those of Charles II. ' The
Intelligence ' of Eoger L'Estrange, and the ' Newes '
of the same favoured journalist, were about the size
of an ordinary dish, and would have done little to
protect Guy's counter from grease and gravy. Of the
same apocryphal character may be the relation that he
was " as little nice in regard to his apparel " as to his
mode of dining. There is one anecdote, however, given
as an example of his penurious habits, which has been
often quoted. I receive it rather as an example of
his decision of character than of his miserly propen-
sities; and I assign the date to his early time of

12 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. I.

work and privation, rather than to the days when he
was accumulating thousands.

At a Common Council, held in October, 1671, an
Act was passed relating to the paving and cleansing
of the streets and sewers. All streets within the city
of London were to be paved round or causeway-
fashion, under the direction of the commissioners for
pavements, &c. The foot-pavements were to be pro-
vided at the expense of the occupants of each house.
The posts which protected the foot-passenger from
the carriages of the causeway were an ancient insti-
tution, which lasted long after Gay in his ' Trivia'
had described them as the defence of the pedestrians.
They were set up by authority after the city had re-
covered its propriety, when the ruins of 1666 had
been cleared away. The following extract from the
' Eules, Orders, and Directions' of 1671, " printed in
a small book, and delivered to or left for every House-
holder," may give me some key to an incident in the
private life of Thomas Guy : — " That the breadth of six
foot at the least from the foundation of the houses in
such of the said High Streets which shall be allowed
to be posted, shall be paved by the inhabitants or
owners with flat or broad stone for the foot passage,
unless such parts thereof as shall lie before any gate-
way, which may be done with square Rag by the
said breadth of six foot, upon pain of paying five
shillings for every week the same shall be omitted
to be done after notice given." It is at this point,
when the successful printer and vender of Bibles was
about twenty-eight years of age, that I would call up
his Shadow, as it appears to me under the one gleam

CHAP. 1. THOMAS GUY. 13

of romance which lighted for a moment his solitary
pursuit of the great purpose of his life.

Customers, wholesale and retail, have found their
way to the new Warehouse for the sale of the privi-
leged Oxford Bibles. Mr. Baskett, now the King's
printer, has a powerful rival. To evade the royal
patent, it will not be necessary for Thomas Guy to
print his pocket Bible with foot-notes, which might be
cut off when the volume was bound. He sits amongst
his stores, musing, with more assurance than Alnaschar
of his visions being realised, of the wealth that will
flow in from his adroit treaty with the syndics of the
Oxford Press. He will not demand the Lord Mayor's
daughter in marriage, nor spurn her from him when
she has accepted him as her lord. The passion for
accumulation has got some possession of him ; but if
he should become rich, which he is firmly resolved to
be, he will not waste his means in extravagant dis-
play, or the dissipation of some young men of the
city, who ape the vices and follies of the courtiers.
What if he should be able to do something towards
the support of the hospital in South wark, which seems
to have fallen more and more into neglect and decay,
since his boyish time when he has seen many a
wretched creature carried within its gates. Sights of
misery have been familiar to him during the course
of his youth and manhood. He has seen the red
cross on many a door during 1665, and has heard
the awful midnight cry of " Bring out your dead."
He has seen, after the plague has abated, what Mr.
Pepys saw, " such begging of beggars." He has seen
crowds of the houseless poor — sick, starving, with no

14 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. I.

place of refuge — after the catastrophe of 1666. The
great , hospital of St. Bartholomew flourishes ; but its
rents, large as they may be, are insufficient to accom-
plish what was desired when it was founded anew by
King Henry VIII., who was "moved thereto with
great pity for and towards the relief and succour and
help of the poor, aged, sick, lame, and impotent
people," described as " lying and going about begging
in the common streets of the city of London and
suburbs of the same." With a strength of will rarely
equalled in real life, he resolves to be rich, and to do
some good with his riches.

But Thomas Guy, in coming to this resolution, has
an arduous struggle with natural feelings. He is
lonely. He has indulged himself with the cost of a
female servant, who cooks his frugal meal, and keeps
his Holland shirt tidy. But he wants the solace of
a household friend. He goes little into society. He
dines rarely in his Company's hall. The city dames,
according to his observation, are too ambitious of
finery. He has once or twice conversed during the
banquet at Guildhall with the daughter of a rich
stationer, and has found her deplorably ignorant of
the commodities in which her father deals. Gradually
he begins to think that his own maid-servant is quite
as attractive as a citizen's daughter ; born of honest
parents, religiously disposed, and skilled in cookery
and other useful arts. What if this neat-handed Phillis
should become his wife! He is sure that he can
compel her to regulate his affairs with due economy.
She has never wasted money or victuals while in his
service. She has professed that implicit obedience

CHAP. 1. THOMAS GUY. 15

to his will which he requires. He at last makes his
proposal, and it is accepted graciously. But there
is one danger which the handmaiden has not fore-
seen. She has not apprehended the possibility of
giving dire offence by the slightest manifestation
of her own opinion in opposition to that of her master.
He has been very cross for several days. He has
been fined once for neglecting to pave the footway
in front of his shop. He delays to incur an expense
which he thinks ought to fall upon the pavement
commissioners ; but he must yield. The paviors go to
work. He watches them narrowly. He has a ground-
plan of his own premises, the boundary of which is
not very well defined in the frontage. He gives the
most minute directions as to the exact point where
his portion of the " flat or broad stone " way within
the posts should begin and end. The workmen find
that a very awkward space is left unpaved. They
carry their remonstrances to the incautious maiden
within doors, during the absence of her master. She
little knows what she is doing when she says, " Do
as you wish. Tell him I bade you, and I am sure
he will not be angry." The poor girl must accept
her destiny, to remain unmarried to the thriving
bookseller. The romance of Thomas Guy's life is
over. He girds up his loins for a struggle for a plum.
But if I see his Shadow aright there is a soft place
in his heart, where the memory of that ill-used woman
will long abide.

Maitland, who eschews all romance, has not a word
of this story, which I find in Nichols. After the
relation of the fortunate contract with the University

16 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. I.

of Oxford, he thus pursues, in his description of
Guy's Hospital, his account of the man he terms
"our founder." "Some time after, England being
engaged in an expensive War against France, the
poor Seamen on board the Royal Navy, for many
years instead of Money received Tickets for their
Pay, which those necessitous but very useful men
were obliged to dispose of at thirty, forty, and some-
times fifty in the hundred discount. Mr. Guy,
discovering the sweets of this traffic, became an
early dealer therein." The " expensive war against
France " acquires a more precise date in the hands
of a writer in Mr. Nichols' ' Literary Anecdotes : '
" The bulk of his fortune was acquired by purchasing
seamen's tickets during Queen Anne's wars, and by
South-Sea Stock in the memorable year 1720." The
slightest acquaintance with English history will show
that the practice of paying seamen by tickets be-
longed to the time of Charles II. "During Queen
Anne's wars" no minister would have dared to
resort to such a financial expedient, which had been
denounced even by the Parliament of the Restoration.
Samuel Pepys, Secretary to the Admiralty, has many
notices in his Diary of this practice, which had nearly
produced a mutiny in the Fleet. On the 28th Sep-
tember, 1667, he writes, "All the morning at the
office, busy upon an Order of Council, wherein they
are mightily at a loss what to advise about our dis-
charging of seamen by ticket, there being no money
to pay their wages before January." The Govern-
ment had become alarmed in the previous June,
when the English deserters on board the Dutch ships

CHAP. I. THOMAS GUY. 17

were reported to say, "We did heretofore fight for
tickets, now we fight for dollars ;" and when, in the
streets of Wapping, the seamen's wives were crying
up and down, "This comes of your not paying our
husbands, and now your work is undone, or done by
hands that understand it not." The ' Diary ' of
Pepys, from February to July 1668, is full of his
anxieties about "the old business of tickets." But
there were higher persons in alarm about the inter-
ference of Parliament with this practice. On the
14th of February he writes, " I do find the Duke of
York himself troubled, and willing not to be troubled
with occasions of having his name used among the
Parliament; though he himself do declare that he
did give directions to Lord Brouncker to discharge
the men at Chatham by ticket, and will own it, if
the House call for it, but not else." At this period
Thomas Guy was still an apprentice. When he
entered upon his own little shop, with his capital of
two hundred pounds, he had probably other uses for
his ready money than to engage in an investment
which was very likely to be altogether lost, in a
general repudiation of State obligations. There are
no distinct traces of the practice of paying seamen
by tickets having been revived, even in the time of
Charles II. Lord Macaulay indeed says, speaking
of the state of the navy, upon the authority of a
memorial by Pepys in 1684, " The sailors were paid
with so little punctuality, that they were glad to
find some usurer who would purchase their tickets at
forty per cent, discount." This memorial of Pepys
his never been printed; .and Lord Macaulay ex-'

18 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. I.

amined the manuscript in Magdalene College, Cam-
bridge. How far the memorial goes back, we are
not informed by the historian. It is scarcely neces-
sary to inquire how long Thomas Guy persisted in
tasting " the sweets of this traffic " after he had once
engaged in a profitable and honourable business.

But there are a few words in Maitland's narrative
which appear to have been overlooked by those who
have built the foundations of Guy's fortune upon
seamen's tickets. He says, " Mr. Guy, discovering
the sweets of this traffic, became an early dealer
therein" But he adds something far more significant
— " as well as in other government securities." From
the Eestoration to the Eevolution the Government
was constantly borrowing. The difficulty of money-
making tradesmen, like Guy, was how to invest their
savings. There was risk in lending to an un-
scrupulous Government ; but men who were rapidly
accumulating — in most cases heaping up riches by
spending far less than they acquired — were content
to run the risk. In 1692 a National Debt was
created by Parliament, and then the process of
lending to the State was wonderfully simplified.
Guy had probably been an uneasy State creditor
under the Government of Charles II. and James II.
Under William III. his private interests and his
public feeling would have led him willingly to take
a portion of that loan of a million which was sanctioned
by Act of Parliament. By this measure the funded
debt of England was first established. Two years
after this memorable era, Thomas Guy was himself
in Parliament as one of the Members for Tamwortn.

CHAP. I. THOMAS GUY. 10

His biography by Maitland points to his parliamentary
career. " As he was a man of unbounded charity and
universal benevolence, so was he likewise a great
patron of liberty and the rights of his fellow-subjects ;
which, to his great honour, he strenuously asserted
in divers Parliaments, whereof he was a Member."
I can trace his name in every list of the House of
Commons, from the third Parliament of William III.
(1695) to the close of the first Parliament of Anne
(1707). Whatever public services he might have
rendered towards the Whig Government, I presume
it was not " by purchasing seamen's tickets during
Queen Anne's wars."

It was at this latter time that Guy appears to have
been more occupied with his plans of benevolence
than with political contentions. During the half
century which followed the period I have assigned
for his transitory dream of domestic happiness, he
seems to have accumulated riches with some con-
sistent purpose of usefully employing them. It is
probable that, very early, a stimulus to exertion had
arisen in his resolves, steadily carried out, to dedi-
cate his gains to charitable uses. It is for this that
he resists all the attractions of City honours. The
prospective dignity of Lord Mayor has no charms for
him, so he pays the customary fine of 500Z. to avoid
the office of Sheriff. Dunton, as we have seen, re-
cords that he had built almshouses in 1705. Two
years later he built three new wards to St. Thomas's
Hospital, besides being a regular benefactor of 100Z.
a year. The prosperous course of his financial opera-
tions, after this period, has been detailed by Mait-

c 2

20 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. I.

land. It was a very simple and straightforward
proceeding for the investment of his accumulations.
" In the year 1710, when the debt of the navy was
increased to divers millions, an Act of Parliament
was made to provide for the payment of that and
other men's dues from the Government, by erecting
the South Sea Company, into which the creditors of
divers branches of the National Debt were empowered
to subscribe the several sums due to them from the
public." He goes on to state that Mr. Gruy, being
possessed of such securities to the amount of many
thousand pounds, subscribed the same into the South
Sea Company, it being the condition that the sub-
scribers should receive an annual interest of six per
cent, upon their respective subscriptions, until the
same should be discharged by Parliament. During
the subsequent ten years, when he was a fundholder
at a moderate rate of interest — not a stockjobber — he
made large benefactions to the Stationers' Company
for poor members, and to Christ's Hospital. In
1720 came the culminating point of his prosperity.
We borrow Maitland's account, which is simple and
clear enough, to show how Guy profited by the
scheme proposed to Parliament by the South Sea
Company, for reducing some of the public debts by
increasing their capital. " It no sooner received the
sanction of Parliament than the national creditors
from all parts came crowding to subscribe into the
said company the several sums due to them from the
Government, by which great run one hundred pounds
of the company's stock that before was sold at one
hundred and twenty pounds (at which time Mr. Guy

CHAP. I. THOMAS GUY. 21

was possessed of forty-five thousand and five hundred
pounds of the said stock), gradually arose to above
one thousand and fifty pounds. Mr. Guy, wisely
considering that the great rise of the stock was owing
to the iniquitous management of a few, prudently
began to sell out his stock at about three hundred
(for that which probably at first did not cost him
above fifty or sixty pounds), and continued selling till
it arose to about six hundred, when he disposed of
the last of his property in the said company." It
thus appears that Mr, Guy's "gains" during this
season of financial madness were not produced by
buying at a low price and selling at a high price.
He was an original large holder of South Sea Stock,
and he followed the course of the market in wisely
selling out at the right season. His decision of
character would lead him to determine this critical
question, which so many speculators fail to solve.
When Sir Robert Walpole sold out at a profit of
1000 per cent., the rich bookseller might safely
follow his lead in private as well as public affairs.
He does not appear to have been a South Sea
Director, or in any way a promoter of the scheme
upon which was founded " the most enormous fabric
of delusion that was ever raised amongst an in-
dustrious, thrifty, and prudent people." Thomas Guy
was amongst the few sagacious ones who profited by
the common phrensy. His fortune had arisen out
of the slow accumulations of a long period of industry.
When he was seventy-six years of age, there came
a great and unexpected accession of wealth. The
wonderful increase produced by the sale of the stock
which he had regarded as a safe investment, " occa-

SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. I.

sioned," says Malcolm, "those the best acquainted
with his affairs to aver that, by the execution of the
pernicious South Sea scheme, Mr. Guy got more
money within the space of three months than what
the erecting, furnishing, and endowing his hospital
amounted to." The building cost nearly nineteen
thousand pounds. The endowment by him amounted
to two hundred and twenty thousand pounds. He
had the satisfaction of knowing that his gains had
been worthily applied, when he saw his hospital roofed
in before his death in 1724.

I have been desirous of defending Thomas Guy
against the charge of having made his great riches
chiefly by usury and stock-jobbing, because I believe
that the printing and sale of Bibles for nearly half a
century would have secured for him very large
accumulations. Let me look a little more par-
ticularly at this question.

There is preserved, in the handwriting of Chris-
topher Barker, in 1582, •' A Note of the offices and
other special licences for printing granted by her
Majesty, with a conjecture of their valuation.' This
printer to the Queen says that the whole Bible
requires so great a cost, that his predecessors kept
the realm twelve years without venturing a single
edition ; but that he had desperately adventured to
print four in a year and a half, expending about
3000?., to the certain ruin of his wife and family if
he had died in the time. Of these four editions,
three were in folio, and one in quarto. The sale of
the folios would necessarily be limited by the cost,
in the way that the same patentee complains of as to
his Book of Common Prayer, " which few or none do

CHAP. I. THOMAS GUY. 23

buy except the minister." .During the ninety years
which elapsed between the date of this letter, and
that period which I may assign for the opening of
the Oxford Bible Warehouse by Guy, there had
probably been very small competition for the sale
of the Holy Scriptures between the King's printer
and the two Universities. The Church Bible was
well printed by each ; but the smaller Bible for
private use was as dear as it was ill-printed. The
demand by the laity produced the attempt of
associated booksellers to print the Bible in Holland.
The attempt failed; and if Guy, or some other
spirited bookseller, had not stepped in to render the
Oxford privilege an active principle, instead of a
dead letter, as regarded the general circulation of
the Bible, the same state of things would have gone
on, as that over which the King's printer lamented
in 1682, namely, that some books which partially
supplied the place of the Common Prayer Book
were in general use.

It required no acquaintance with Christopher
Barker's letter to satisfy Thomas Guy that a cheap
book sold largely would be "a profitable copy;"
that where Field's great Bible would sell one copy,
a hundred common Bibles might be sold at a tenth
of its price. Guy called forth a real competition
between two privileged bodies, and this neutralised
the evil of their monopoly. In the present day the
same limited competition has produced a cheapness
which excites the wonder of those who are not aware
of what results can be produced in the price of books
by an universal demand.

24 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. II.

CHAPTEE II.

JOHN DUNTON.

N" a copy of verses prefixed to ' The Life
and Errors ' of John Dunton — which
poem is entitled ' The Author's Speak-
ing Picture, drawn by Himself, in 1705,'
there is the following couplet : —

" I love to know the inside of a man,
Let who will gaze o' th' shadow of him then."

I must be content to gaze on the shadow of this
man, without too much regard to his moral or intel-
lectual peculiarities. These procured for him the
name of a "lunatick" among his contemporaries.
Warburton described him as "an auction book-
seller and an abusive scribbler;" and the elder
D'Israeli notices him as " a cracked-brain scribbling
bookseller, who boasted he had a thousand projects,
fancied he had methodised six hundred, and was
ruined by the fifty he executed." And yet, in spite
of all this, I must call up the shadow of John Dunton
to say something for himself, and to usher in other
shadows of his contemporaries — booksellers, printers,
authors, journalists, licensers of the press — around
whom he has gathered many illustrations of the
literary history of the time from James II. to

CHAP. II. JOHN DUXTOX. 25

George II., which I should in vain look for in the
graver records of a sober bibliographer. So I wade,
for the third or fourth time, through a volume of
seven hundred pages, vilely printed upon the most
wretched paper, whose title-page is itself emblematic
of the " inside of the man," as setting forth not only
his " life and errors," but his " idea of a new life ; "
his "discoveries made in his travels already, and
in his private conversation at home ; " together with
" the lives and characters of a thousand persons now
living in London, &c." This volume, "written by
himself in solitude," was published by E. Malthus, in
1705, and was reprinted by Mr. John Bowyer
Nichols, in 1817. John Dunton's "speech is like a
tangled chain, nothing impaired, but all disordered;"
so I will endeavour to arrange some of its more inte-
resting portions into some method.

From an early age to his ninth year, there was
a boy growing up almost as an orphan, in a school at
Dungrove, near Chesham, in Buckinghamshire. His
father was born at Little Missenden, in the same
county, of which parish two previous John Duntons
had been the ministers. He records that he was
born on the 14th of May, 1659. His father was then
rector of Graffham in Huntingdonshire. Losing
his wife when his only child was an infant, the
father went away to Ireland, with the resolution
not to marry again for seven years. Meanwhile the
little boy was left to strangers, appearing by his own
account to have learnt little, and to have led an idle
life, playing on the pleasant banks of the Chess, and
rambling amongst the Chiltern hills. His father

26 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. II.

returning to England after his long exile, was pre-
sented to the living of Aston Clinton. He then
married a second time, and sent for his little son
home, to superintend his education, with a view
to his becoming a faithful preacher of the doctrines
that had come down from the old Puritans, but were
growing into disrepute after the restoration of the
Stuarts and the re-establishment of episcopacy. He
was doomed to disappointment. Young John, de-
scribing himself at the age of fourteen as being
" wounded by a silent passion for a virgin in my
father's house," says, " my father tried all the
methods with me that could be thought of, in order
to reconcile my mind to the love of learning, but all
of them proved useless and ineffectual. My thoughts
were all unbent and dissolved in the affairs of love."
What he calls his " unsettled mercurial humour,"
destroyed his father's hopes that he might be able to
transmit " the priesthood to his own posterity." He
learnt Latin, but the difficulties of the Greek quite
broke all his resolutions. So the worthy man, seeing
that his son's inclinations did not lead him to learn-
ing, " thought to make it his interest to be a friend
to learning and the Muses." He was to be appren-
ticed to a London bookseller. He was now, he
says, " only to traffic with the outside, the shell, and
the casks of learning." His intended master, Mr.
Parkhurst, " a religious and a just man," was kind
to the youth upon trial, but having gratified his
curiosity, John took horse to Aston Clinton without
leave. His father sent him back again, with a kind
and sensible letter of excuse, and so he was bound

CHAP. II. JOHN DUXTOX. 27

apprentice. Better thoughts came upon him, and
" from that very time I began to love books to the
same excess that I had hated them before." His
father died in 1676, giving young John his dying
counsels " to know, fear, love, obey, and serve God,
your Creator and Deliverer, as he hath revealed
Himself, through His Son, by the Spirit, in His
Holy Word." Amidst all his " errors," the thought
of his father's instruction seems to have had some
influence upon his wayward nature, and to have kept
him from greater evils than the misfortunes which
sprang from his instability. The bookseller's appren-
tice had then five more years to serve. These he
accomplished without any other outbreak, beyond
that of taking a prominent part in a political move-
ment of Whig apprentices against the Tory ; and
when his apprenticeship was just expiring, he " in-
vited a hundred apprentices to celebrate a funeral
for it, though it was no more than a youthful piece
of vanity." He was soon a bookseller on his own
account, occupying " half a shop, a warehouse^ and a
fashionable chamber." The young man had inherited
some property, which might be available for his busi-
ness. His excellent father, amongst other counsels,
had advised him to use all possible prudence in the
choice of a wife, further exhorting him to keep
something more solid than investments in publishing
speculations. " Sell not," he said, " any part of your
estate in land, if either your wife's portion, or your
borrowing of money upon interest, may conveniently
serve to set up your trade." "Even," said the
cautious father, " if you shall, by some remarkable"

28 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. II.

providence, meet with a wife of a considerable estate,
you may, by her portion, set up your trade without
mortgaging of your land." John Dunton had thus
some present command of capital, which he Avas in a
fair way to improve into a fortune, or, more probably,
to dissipate. " Printing," he says, " was now the
uppermost in my thoughts, and hackney authors
began to ply me with specimens as earnestly, and
with as much passion and concern, as the watermen
do passengers with oars and scullers." He was, how-
ever, for a time, prudent; confined his business of
publishing to the works of Nonconformist ministers,
to whom his name was a recommendation. His first
venture was a work by the Reverend Thomas Doo-
little. His mode of managing this volume shows
how in the primitive days, when there was little
ready money, and credit was not easily attainable
for a beginner, there was a good understanding
amongst booksellers, which had much of the simpli-
city of barter. " This book fully answered my end ;
for, exchanging it through the whole trade, it fur-
nished my shop with all sorts of books saleable
at that time." He says, "I would endeavour to
penetrate, as far as possible, into the mysteries of my
trade." Some of the publishing mysteries of that
time he seems to have eschewed. " A man should
be furnished with an honest policy, if he intends to
set out in the world now-a-days. And this is no less
necessary in a bookseller, than in any other trades-
man, for in that way there are plots and counter-
plots, and a whole army of hackney authors, that
keep their grinders moving by the travail of their

CHAP. II. JOHX DUNTON. 29

pens. These gormandisers will eat you the very life
out of a copy so soon as ever it appears ; for, as the
times go, original and abridgment are almost reckoned
as necessary as man and wife ; so that I am really
afraid a bookseller and a good conscience will shortly
grow some strange thing in the earth." Dunton,
I trust, was preserved from some of the dangers
of his susceptible nature, as well as from the
temptations of commercial life, by marrying into
a religious family. He fell in love at church with
Elizabeth Annesley, the daughter of the Rev. Dr.
Annesley, an eminent preacher amongst the Non-
conformists. By marrying this lady he became the
brother-in-law of Samuel Wesley, the father of
the famous John Wesley, the founder of Methodism.
The courtship appears to have been conducted on
Dunton's part with as much poetical as religious
fervour. Plain Elizabeth was not sufficiently lofty
for his impassioned letters. His mistress was the
" lovely Iris," and he, " poor languishing Philarete."
In spite of these affectations they were united in
1682, and Dr. Annesley preached the marriage
sermon. " Dear Iris " gave an early specimen of her
prudence and diligence. She was "bookseller and
cash-keeper" at Dunton's shop, the Black Raven,
in Gracechurch-street, and he honestly admits,
" managed all my affairs for me, and left me en-
tirely to my own rambling and scribbling humours."
He soon found, or made, an occasion for the indul-
gence of his vagrant humour. " There came an
universal damp upon trade by the* defeat of Mon-
mouth in the West ; and at this time, having 500/.

30 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. II.

owing to me in New England, I began to think it
worth my while to make a voyage of it thither."
Landing at Boston, after a voyage of four months,
he consoled dear Iris by sending her sixty letters by
one ship. Half of his venture in books had been
cast away in the Downs. He was away nearly a
year, trafficking without much profit, for he says of
the inhabitants of Boston, " he that trades with them
may get promises enough, but their payments come
late." He has more to tell about his platonic friend-
ships with maids and widows, than of his dealings
with the four booksellers of Boston, to whom he was
" as welcome as sour ale in summer." On his return
to England he found his affairs in a bad condition,
and sought to mend them by a voyage to Holland.

At this period the young bookseller's capital was
evidently much wasted already, by improvident spe-
culations, by his unstable habits, and by becoming
surety for summer friends. Yet he boasts that of
the six hundred books he printed during his career,
he had only to repent of seven. One project was a
decided success, and has associated his name witli
the discovery of the power of periodical publication,
as applied to other subjects than news. Of 'The
Athenian Mercury,' the first number appeared on
March 17, 1690. With all his versatility, John
Duuton kept on this penny tract, of a single leaf, till
February, 1696, when he proposed to publish his
' Mercuries ' in quarterly volumes. He decided upon
this course, "as the coffee-houses had the Votes
every day, and nine newspapers every week." He
designed, however, to resume his weekly half-sheet

CHAP. II. JOHN DUNTOX. 31

" as soon as the glut of news is a little over." In
1696 William III., after his glorious campaign, had
to struggle against the plots of St. Germains ; and the
nation, amidst the discovery and punishment of
treason, had little time for the solution by the
" Athenians " of " the nice and curious questions pro-
posed by the ingenious." Regarding the nineteen
volumes of the ' Athenian Mercury ' as the precursors
of a revolution in the entire system of our lighter
literature, which turned pamphlets and broadsides
into magazines and miscellanies, I may call up the
shadow of John Dunton, to linger a while on the
scene with his "Athenian Society," which he avers
" had their first meeting in my brain." He had three
associates in this Society, — Richard Sault, a Cam-
bridge theologian; Samuel Wesley; and the Rev.
Dr. John Norn's. They contrived to persuade the
world that they were "the only knowing men of
Europe," by keeping their names " religiously secret."
In ' The History of the Athenian Society,' by one of
the members (published in ' The Athenian Oracle,'
a selection from the periodical work) it is maintained
that " England has the glory of giving rise to two of
the noblest designs that the art of man is capable
of inventing — the Royal Society and the Athenian
Society." Of the latter, the aim is " to advance all
knowledge, and diffuse a general learning through
the many, and by that civilize more now in a few
years, than Athens itself did of old during the ages it
flourished."

Of the success of his little periodical, and of the
fame which it brought to him, Dunton was naturally

32 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. II.

proud. Poems in its honour "were written by the
chief wits of the age." The Marquis of Halifax
perused it; and "the late Sir William Temple, a
man of clear judgment and wonderful penetration,
was pleased to honour me with frequent letters and
questions." Another record is more curious : " Mr.
Swift, a country gentleman, sent an ode to the
Athenian Society, which, being an ingenious poem,
was prefixed to the fifth supplement of the ' Athenian
Mercury.' " This was the Ode of which Johnson
speaks: "I have been told that Dryden, having
perused these verses, said. 'Cousin Swift, you will
never be a poet ; ' and that this denunciation was the
motive of Swift's perpetual malevolence to Dryden."
The poem is to be found in all editions of Swift. We
are startled when we read, —

" Pardon, ye great unknown, and far-exalted men,
The wild excursions of a youthful pen."

But how far more surprising is it to find Jonathan
Swift, the haughtiest of mankind, sounding "the very
base string of humility," in his letter "to the
Athenian Society," dated from Moor Park, February
14, 1691 : "For the Ode enclosed, I have sent it to a
person of very great learning and honour, and since
to some others, the best of my acquaintance (to which
I thought very proper to inure it for a greater light),
and they have all been pleased to tell me that they
are sure it will not be unwelcome, and that I should
beg the honour of you to let it be printed before your
next volume (which I think is soon to be published),
it being so usual amongst books of any great value

CHAP. II. JOHN DUNTOX. 33

among poets; and, before its seeing the world, I
submit it wholly to the correction of your pens.
I entreat, therefore, one of you would descend so far
as to write two or three lines to me of your pleasure
upon it ; which, as I cannot but expect from gentle-
men who have so well shown upon so many occasions
that greatest character of scholars, in being favour-
able to the ignorant, so I am sure nothing at present
can more highly oblige me, or make me happier."
Ingenuous young Secretary of Sir William Temple,
how much hadst thou to forget of the " pride which
licks the dust," and to learn in the world's school of
ambition and insolence, between 1691 and 1711 !
When Harley promised thee a bishopric for doing the
dirtiest offices that a great intellect ever stooped to,
thou would'st have made short work with the " devils
of Grub-street rogues," such as John Dunton and his
Athenians.

During the course of publication of the 'Athenian
Mercury,' Duuton was relieved from some of his early
difficulties, by coming " into possession of a consider-
able estate," by the decease of his cousin. "The
world," he says, " now smiled on me. I sailed with
wind and tide, and had humble servants enough
among the Stationers, Booksellers, Printers, and
Binders." Honours awaited him. " Now the Master
and Assistants of the Company of Stationers began
to think me sufficient to wear a livery ;" and he paid
his livery-fine of twenty pounds. The business of
bookselling had, upon the accession of William and
Mary, attained that freedom which had been denied
to authors and publishers by Charles I., Charles II.,

D

34 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. II.

and James II. " The Liberty of Unlicensed Print-
ing," so nobly advocated by Milton, was established,
although some restraint upon the Press still remained
till 1694. Dunton's " character of the several
licensers with whom I have had concerns" offers a
curious peep behind the scenes. Sir Eoger L'Estrange
is the first on the list, and he is not simply dismissed
with telling the world that his sting is gone, but is
thus characterized : — " A man that betrays his reli-
gion and country in pretending io defend it ; that
was made Surveyor of the Press, and would wink at
unlicensed books if the printer's wife would but smile
on him." "Mr. Eraser," Dunton says, "was our
chief Licenser for several years. He licensed for
me the 'Athenian Mercuries,' 'The Works of the
Learned,' ' The Eoyal Voyage,' and such a numerous
company of other books, as advanced his fees, for
bare licensing, to thirty pounds per annum, which I

paid him for several years together No man

was better skilled in the mystery of winning upon
the hearts of booksellers, nor were the Company of
Stationers ever blessed with an honester Licenser."
He names several others, always with commendation.
John had no doubt learnt " the mystery of winning
upon the hearts " of the Licensers. There was a
jackal of these lions in the path of publishers who is
thus described : — " Mr. Robert Stephens is ' Mes-
senger to the Press,' as well as a printer. I know
Robin has many enemies that grunt at him (and
perhaps they have reason for it) ; but if I will praise
the bridge that I went over, I must say he never did
me the least injury ; for, if I printed a book that had

CHAP. II. JOHN DUNTON. 35

no license, I took such care to dazzle his eyes that he
could not see it; and Eobin will be as true to his
friend, when there is a fellow-feeling in the case, as
any man in the world, which is a rare quality in a
man that lives by informing" The licensing system,
with all its tyranny and corruption, had one advan-
tage. It did something to protect the copyright in
books from piracy. The Licensing Acts and Pro-
clamations prohibited the printing of any book with-
out the consent of the owner, as also without a
license. In the interval between the period when
licenses for the press had ceased, and the passing of
the Copyright Act of the 8th of Anne, there was no
effectual protection for literary property. During
those twenty years, the men abundantly flourished
who are described by Addison in the ' Tatler ' as " a
set of wretches we authors call pirates, who print any
book, poem, or sermon, as soon as it appears in the
world, in a smaller volume, and sell it, as all other
thieves do stolen goods, at a cheaper rate." Dunton
has drawn the character of one of this tribe : " Mr.
Lee, in Lombard-street. Such a pirate, such a cor-
morant, was never before. Copies, books, men, ships,
all was one ; he held no propriety, right or wrong,
good or bad, till at last he began to be known ; and
the booksellers, not enduring so ill a man among
them to disgrace them, spewed him out, and off he
marched for Ireland, where he acted as felonious Lee,
as he did in London." There he might safely pirate.
That trade flourished, more or less, till the Union of
1801 put an end to it.

Dunton's picture of "felonious Lee" is quite an

D 2

36 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. II.

exception to the usual sugared style in which he por-
trays his professional contempoi'aries. lioger North
described the booksellers of Little Britain as " knowing
and conversable men, with whom, for the sake of book-
ish knowledge, the greatest wits were pleased to con-
verse." But with John Dunton, many of them are
almost miracles of talent and learning. One is " a
man of very quick parts ;" of another it is affirmed,
that " for sense, wit, and good-humour there are but
few can equal, and none can exceed him." One is
*' very much conversant in the sacred writings ;" a
second " speaks French and Latin with a great deal
of fluency and ease ;" a third is " familiarly acquainted
with all the books that are extant in any language."
It is astonishing how many are remarkable for the
beauty of their persons — their eyes "brisk and spark-
ling;" of "graceful aspect;" of "a lovely proportion,
exceedingly well made." A valued friend who, like
myself, has found something more than folly in
Dunton's ' Life and Errors,' says " never certainly,
before or since, were all the graces, both of mind and
body, so generally diffused among any class of men
as among these old London booksellers."* I must
not dwell upon these " words of such sweet breath
composed," but look a little further into this his-
torian of " the trade," to note down some of its
peculiarities at the end of the seventeenth century, as
developed in some of his characters.

First, let me catch a glimpse of the localities in
wliich these busy bees buzzed and made their honey.

* G. L. Craik, in Knight's ' London,' Vol. V. No. CXV.

CHAP. II. JOHN DUNTON. 37

About twenty years after Dunton published his
volume, Macky, the author of a 'Journey through
England,' traced out their general distribution through
the metropolis : " The booksellers of Antient books
in all languages are in Little Britain and Paternoster-
row; those for Divinity and Classics on the north
side of St. Paul's Cathedral ; Law, History, and Plays
about Temple Bar ; and the French Booksellers in
the Strand. It seems, then, that the bookselling
business has been gradually resuming its original
situation near this Cathedral ever since the begin-
ning of George I., while the neighbourhood of Duck-
lane and Little Britain has been proportionally
falling into disuse." Little Britain, once the grand
emporium of books, we thus learn, was going down
in 1724 ; and was probably then chiefly tenanted by
those called by Roger North " demi-booksellers,"
who furnished " half a shop which serves for the sign
of a bookseller rather than a real one." He is hard
upon this tribe : "It is wretched to consider what
pickpocket work, with help of the press, these derni-
booksellers make. They crack their brains to find
out selling subjects, and keep hirelings in garrets,
at hard meat, to write and correct by the great ; and
so puff up an octavo to a sufficient thickness, and there
is six shillings current for an hour and a half s read-
ing, and perhaps never to be read or looked upon
after." With the aid of Dunton I may behold the
Shadow of many an entire or demi-bookseller, sitting
under his sign in other places than Little Britain and
Paternoster-row, than St. Paul's Churchyard, Temple
Bar, and the Strand. They start up in the New

38 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. II.

Exchange and in Westminster Hall, in the Savoy
and in the Inner Temple. They are, in some sort,
ubiquitous. Mr. Benjamin Harris — who in King
Charles's reign had the satisfaction, as he stood on
the pillory, to have his wife standing by his side to
defend her husband against the mob — was the com-
panion of Dunton as they travelled from Bury Fair.
Mr. Shrewsbury — who " merits the name of universal
bookseller, and is a great ornament to the Stationers'
Company" — made our imitative John free of Stur-
bridge Fair ; " he, perhaps, is the only bookseller
who understands fair-keeping to any advantage."
Mr. Larkin " keeps Bristol Fair every year, and is a
very thriving man."

" A bookseller," says Dunton, " if he is a man of
any capacity and observation, can tell best what to
go upon, and what has the best prospect of success."
The best book is not always that which "has the
best prospect of success ;" and thus even booksellers
" of capacity and observation " often make grave mis-
takes on deciding " what is best to go upon." Authors
are apt to hold the experience of " the trade " in
some contempt; and, perhaps in a greater extent,
" the trade " is apt to regard the aesthetic theories
of authors as the dreams of vanity. In Dunton's
characters of his contemporary brethren we have
evidence enough that the booksellers of that time
were practical men, who published many excellent
works which still hold a place in our libraries. Some
went the safest way to work, by cultivating the
friendship of writers of reputation. Thus " Mr. Wel-
lington has the intimate acquaintance of several

CHAP. II. JOHN DUNTON.

excellent pens, and therefore can never want copies."
Mr. Kichard Chiswell " has not been known to print
either a bad book or on bad paper. He is admirably
well qualified for his business, and knows how to
value a copy according to its worth ; witness the pur-
chase he has made of Archbishop Tillotson's octavo
sermons." Mr. Knapton " shews by his purchasing
of Dampier's Voyages that he knows how to value a
good copy." Mr. Tonson " is himself a very good
judge of persons and authors." Awnsham and John
Churchill, " two booksellers and brothers of an uni-
versal wholesale trade," had the great merit and the
provident virtue of liberality : " They never starve
an undertaking to save charges." Integrity, in a
business of such publicity, was as necessary to success
as judgment and prudence. " Mr. Eobert Clavel is
a great dealer, and has deservedly gained himself
the reputation of a just man. Doctor Barlow, Bishop
of Lincoln, used to call him ' the honest bookseller.' "
Others, by associating themselves with Party in
Church or State, made fast friends, who considered
a publisher's success as essentially connected with
their own fame and advancement. Mr. Thomas
Parkhurst, mentioned by Dunton as " my honoured
master," is " the most eminent Presbyterian book-
seller in the three kingdoms, and now chosen master
of the Company of Stationers." Mr. Thomas Bennet,
" very much devoted to the Church, has a consider-
able trade in Oxford, and prints for Dr. South and
the most eminent Conformists." Atterbury was his
great friend and patron, and preached his funeral
sermon in 1706. His religious and moral qualities

40 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. II.

are eloquently described. His qualities as a book-
seller are worthy of emulation : — " I need not say
how perfect a master he was of all the business
of that useful profession wherein he had engaged
himself; you know it well ; and the great success
liis endeavours met witk- sufficiently proves it. Nor
could the event well be otherwise ; for his natural
abilities were very good, and his industry exceed-
ing great ; and the evenness and probity of his
temper not inferior to either of them. Besides, he
had one peculiar felicity (which carried in it some
resemblance of a great Christian perfection), that
he was entirely contented and pleased with his lot ;
loving his employment for its own sake, as he hath
often said, and so as to be willing to spend the rest
of his life in it, though he were not, if that could
be supposed, to reap any further advantages from it.
Not but that the powers of his mind were equal to
much greater tasks. But his own inclinations were
rather to confine himself to his own business, and be
serviceable to Religion and Learning in the way in
which Clod's Providence had seemed more particularly
to direct him, and in which it had so remarkably
blessed him." Special branches of publishing attracted
some of the most successful of " the trade." Thomas
Guy founded his fortune upon Bibles. The Ballards,
father and son, carried on their business in school-
books and Divinity during nearly the whole of the
eighteenth century. Dunton says of Samuel, the
elder : " He is a young bookseller in Little Britain,
but is grown man in body now, but more in mind."
He died in 1761. The younger, Edward, was the

CHAP. II. JOHN DUNTOX. 41

last bookseller in Little Britain, dying in 1796, at
the age of eighty-eight, in the same house in which
he was born. I can scarcely resist the desire to call
up the Shadow of this old man, to relate the changes
which he had witnessed in his professional experience
during the reigns of the three Georges. But such
a prologue would be too long ; and probably Little
Britain, going to decay, was not the fittest elevation
for a bird's-eye view of a profession which had spread
not only over all the capital, but bad established
itself in the remotest parts of the kingdom.

A few of Dunton's eccentric stars are worth a
passing notice. Of Mr. .Richard Crouch he says, " He
has melted down the best of our English histories
into twelvepenny books, which are filled with wonders,
varieties, and curiosities." Mr. William Miller il had
the largest collection of stitched books of any man in
the world, and could furnish the clergy, at a- dead
lift, with a printed sermon on any text or occasion."
Mr. William Goodwin, who prints the Votes of the
House of Commons and is Dr. Sherlock's bookseller,
dabbles sometimes in humbler things : " Mr. William
Kogers, Mr. Harris, and myself, were once partners
with him in printing some dying speeches." One —
of whom posterity has taken no notice as " the most
ingenious bard (of a bookseller) in London " — was
great in his professional line : " For forming of titles
commend me to Herbert Walwyn ; for I could give
an instance in which he exceeded a club of wits in
that nice affair." Let me not pass over Mrs. Tacy
Sowles, an eminent Quaker. " She is both a printer
as well as a bookseller, and the daughter of one ; and

42 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. II.

understands her trade very well, being a good com-
positor herself." Dunton dismisses the country book-
sellers with brevity as regards individuals, but with a
sweeping commendation, which it may be hoped is
deserved by their successors, now multiplied twenty-
fold : " Of three hundred booksellers now trading in
country towns, I know not of one knave or a block-
head amongst them all."

Book-auctioneers come in for the notice of Dunton :
" The famous Mr. Edward Millington was originally
a bookseller, which he left off, being better cut out
for an auctioneer. He had a quick wit and a won-
derful fluency of speech. There was usually as much
comedy in his ' once, twice, thrice ! ' as can be met
with in a modern play. 'Where,' said Milliogton,
' is your generous flame for learning ? Who but a
sot or a blockhead would have money in his pocket
and starve his brains?' Though I suppose he had
but a round of jests, Dr. Cave, once bidding too lei-
surely for a book, says Millington, ' Is this your
Primitive Christianity?' alluding to a book the
honest Doctor had published under that title." Book-
auctions, at the time when John Dunton was an
apprentice, were just coming into vogue. Dr. Dibdin
gives an address ' To the Reader,' prefixed to a cata-
logue of books offered for public sale in the year 1676,
which he says is the earliest auction catalogue he has
met with. This address thus commences : " It hath
not been usual here in England to make sale of books
by way of auction, or who will give most for them ; but
it having been practised in other countries to the
advantage both of buyers and sellers, it was therefore

CHAP. II. JOHN DUXTOX. 43

conceived (for the encouragement of learning) to
publish the sale of these books this manner of way." *
If in a few years book-auctions were common in Lon-
don, they were rare in the country. Kalph Thoresby,
in his Diary, has described " the first that ever was
at this town " — Leeds — when a bookseller from Shef-
field was the auctioneer. It was in the evening of the
7th January, 1693, that " the large chamber, being
overcrowded with the press of people, in an instant
sunk down about a foot at one end ; the main beam
breaking gave so terrible a thunder-like crack, and
the floor yielding below their feet, the people set up
such a hideous noise, apprehending the fall of the
whole house, at least the sinking of the room (which,
in all probability, had been the death of most present),
as was most doleful and astonishing, though I, sitting
upon the long table by the books, was not at first
apprehensive of the danger ; but being informed by
a friend of the imminent danger, I hasted out with
what expedition I could." JDunton, with his cus-
tomary versatility, turned from publishing to book-
auctioneering, and in 1698 was busy in Dublin with
a cargo of books. In an address " to the wise, learned,
and studious gentlemen of the kingdom of Ireland,"
he says : " Though the summer be a time for rambling,
and the season of the year invite all men abroad that
love to see foreign countries ; yet it was not this alone,
but the good acceptance the way of sale of auction
has met with from all lovers of books, that encouraged
me to bring to this kingdom of Ireland a general

* Bibliomania, p. 305.

44 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. II.

collection of the most valuable pieces in Divinity,
History, Philosophy, Law, Physic, Mathematics,
Horsemanship, Merchandise, Limning, Military Dis-
cipline, Heraldry, Music, Fortification, Fireworks,
Husbandry, Gardening, Komances, Novels, Poems,
Plays, Bibles, and School-books, that have been
printed in England since the dreadful Fire in London
in 1666, to this present time." After staying in
Ireland six months, having had many quarrels with
the booksellers, which he relates in a tract called
' The Dublin Scuffle,' he goes home with great com-
placency. " A worthy member of the House of Com-
mons did me the honour to say, ' that I had been, by
this undertaking, a great benefactor to this country.'
And no longer than yesterday a clergyman told Mr.
Penny, an English gentleman, ' that I had done more
service to learning, by my three auctions, than any
one single man. that had come into Ireland these
hundred years.' "

Poor Dunton was, by this time, involved in com-
mercial difficulties. Over-printing had brought him
to grief, as it has done many others who speculate in
" copies." There is a quaint notice of one of his cus-
tomers which is suggestive : " Having characterised
the stationers that supplied my printers with paper,
it is fit the stationer to whom I sold all my waste-
paper should bring up the rear. And this leads me to
characterise my neighbour Tyson, in Redcross-street,
of whom I never bought, but sold (the more is the
pity) many hundred reams of ' Tigurine Liturgy,'
' Edict of Nantes,' and other books that my friends
had forgot to ask for." Before he commenced his

CHAP. II. JOHN DUNTON. 45

' Life and Errors,' he had ceased to be a bookseller.
But he is an indefatigable scribbler. The success of
'The Tatler' in 1709 seems to have excited his am-
bition to rival the paper which Steele and Addison
had carried into a far more exalted region of litera-
ture than ' The News Letter ' and « The Post Boy,'
Vnd even Defoe's 'Review.' In the original folio
edition of ' The Tatler,' No. 144, 1 find this wonderful
advertisement of a new Journal, also issued by John
Morphew. As his imprint is continued through the
whole series of Mr. Isaac Bickerstaff's two hundred
and seventy-one half-sheets, Steele appears not to
have been offended at his printer's association with
a noted rival : —

" Just published, A Weekly Paper, entitled Athenian News ;
or Dnnton's Oracle : To be continued every Tuesday and Satur-
day, in 3000 distinct Posts, entitled, The Merry-Post, the Philo-
sopliick-Post, and so on to 3000 Posts, 30 of which complete a
Volume. To each of these Posts will be added, The Casuistical-
Post ; or, Athenian Mercury ; resolving all nice and curious
questions in Prose or Verse. Numb. I. The Subject this Time
is, Dunton's Post; or, A Dying Farewell to this Life."

Swift, in his more than party-malignity against his
old friend Steele, has preserved the name of Dunton
" like a fly in amber," to give a sharper point to his
bitter irony. Two-and-twenty years had passed since
the secretary of Sir William Temple had addressed
the writers of ' The Athenian Mercury ' as " great
unknown and far-exalted men." Thus the ablest tool
of Harley and Bolingbroke writes in 1713 : —

" Among the present writers on the Whig side, I
can recollect but three of any great distinction, which
are ' The Flying Post,' Mr. Dunton, and the author

46 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. II.

of ' The Crisis ' [Steele]. The first of these seems to
have been much sunk in reputation since the sudden
retreat of the only true, genuine, original author, Mr.
Bidpath, who is celebrated by 'The Dutch Gazetteer'
as one of the best pens in England. Mr. Dunton hath
been longer and more conversant in books than any
of the three, as well as more voluminous in his pro-
ductions : however, having employed his studies in so
great a variety of other subjects, he hath, I think, but
lately turned his genius to politics. His famous tract,
entitled ' Neck or Nothing/ must be allowed to be
the shrewdest piece, and written with the most spirit
of any which hath appeared from that side since the
change of the ministry. It is, indeed, a most cutting
satire upon the Lord Treasurer and Lord Bolingbroke ;
and I wonder none of our friends ever undertook to
answer it. I confess I was at first of the same opinion
with several good judges, who from the style and
manner suppose it to have issued from the sharp pen
of the Earl of Nottingham; and I am still apt to
think it might receive his Lordship's last hand. The
third and principal of this triumvirate is the author
of ' The Crisis,' who, although he must yield to ' The
Flying Post ' in knowledge of the world and skill in
politics, and to Mr. Dunton in keenness of satire and
variety of reading, hath yet other qualities enough to
denominate him a writer of a superior class to either,
provided he would a little regard the propriety and
disposition of his words, consult the grammatical part,
and get some information on the subject he intends
to handle." *

* ' Public Spirit of the Whigs.'

CHAP. II. JOHN DUNTON. 47

Poor John Dunton ! He receives this banter as
serious praise, which proves that " the Eeverend and
Learned Dr. Jonathan Swift, though a great Jacobite,"
clears him from " the undeserved slander of being
crazed in his intellectuals." Vain old bookseller ! An
age of poverty and dire wretchedness was before you
when you mistook irony for admiration. You did not
make hay when the sun was shining, and now it is
dreary night with you. But you still look back
with more than complacency upon your multifarious
labours. In an appeal to King George I., which you
call your ' Dying Groans from the Fleet Prison, or
last shift for life,' you claim to have had " the most
distinguished share " in bringing about " the general
deliverance" accomplished by the accession of the
House of Brunswick. You appeal to the King's
compassion for your miseries, wants, and services,
"the Pretender having sworn that John Dunton is
the first man he will hang at Tyburn if ever he
ascends the British throne, for his having writ forty
books to prove him a Popisli impostor, and all his
adherents either fools, knaves, or madmen."

48 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. III.

CHAPTEE III.

JACOB TONSON.

T is the second week of September, the
year 1666. At his shop-door in Holborn,
beneath the time-honoured emblem of
his profession, the particoloured pole,
stands Mr. Jacob Tonson, barber-surgeon. He looks
earnestly and sorrowfully at the dense canopy of
smoke that hangs over the east. The fire that had
destroyed more than half of London is still smoulder-
ing. Fragments of burning paper still fall upon the
causeway, as the remains of the books that were
stowed in St. Faith's, under Paul's, are stirred by
the wind. Mr. Tonson is troubled, He has friends
amongst the booksellers in the ruined City ; and
occasional customers who have come thence to be
trimmed, with beards of a se'nnight's growth, tell
him that these traders are most of them undone.

A month has passed since the fire broke out. The
wealthy are finding house-room in Westminster and
Southwark, and in streets of the City which the
flames have not reached. The poor are still, many
of them, abiding in huts and tents in Moorfields and
St. George's Fields, and on the hills leading to High-
gate. Some of the great thoroughfares may now be
traversed. Mr. Tonson will venture forth to see the

CHAP. III. JACOB TOXSON. 49

condition of his Company's Hall. With his second
son, Jacob, holding his hand, he makes his way to
Mugwell Street. Barber Surgeons' Hall has sus-
tained some injury ; but the Theatre, built by Inigo
Jones, which is the pride of the Company, has not
been damaged. He shows his son Holbein's great
picture of the Company receiving their charter from
Henry VIII., and expatiates upon the honour of
belonging to such a profession. Young Jacob does
not seem much impressed by the paternal enthu-
siasm. The blood-letting and tooth-drawing are not
more attractive to him than the shaving, which latter
operation his father deputes to his apprentices. They
make their way through narrow lanes across Alders-
gate Street, and so into Little Britain. Mr. Tonson
enters a large book-shop, and salutes the bookseller
with great respect. By common repute, Mr. Scot is
the largest librarian in Europe. Young Jacob listens
attentively to all that passes. His father brings out
"William London's 'Catalogue of the most vendible
Books in England,'* and inquires for 'The Ana-
tomical Exercises of Dr. W. Harvey, Physician to
the King's Most Excellent Majesty, concerning the
Motion of the Heart and Blood.' Mr. Scot is some-
what at leisure, and says that he has heard more dis-

* I am indebted to Dr. John Edward Gray, of the British
Museum, for the loan of this curious and rare volume, published
in 1658. Dibdin says, in a note to his edition of ' More's
Utopia,' that in the Introduction to this catalogue, "Almost
every popular English writer, up to the period when it was com-
posed, is quoted or referred to. Such an excellent treatise has
never since accompanied any bookseller's catalogue."

E

50 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. III.

putes about Dr. Harvey's opinions of the circulation
of the blood, than upon any subject not theological.
Mr. Tonson buys for his son, who has a taste for
verse, a little volume of ' Mr. Milton's Poems, with
a Mask before the Earl of Bridgwater.' Mr. Scot
informs him that Mr. Milton, who had gone to Buck-
inghamshire upon the breaking out of the plague,
has returned to his house in Bunhill Fields, and, as
he hears, is engaged upon a heroic poem. He inti-
mates that he knew in 1660 where Mr. Milton was
in hiding, pretty nigh his shop. The sum which
Mr. Tonson has to pay for the two books rather ex-
ceeds his expectation ; but Mr. Scot gives it not only
as his own opinion, but that of a very shrewd cus-
tomer of his, Mr. Pepys, that, in consequence of so
many books being burned, there will be a great want
of books. Mr. Scot is firmly impressed with the
truth of an old adage, that what is one man's loss is
another man's gain, and has no scruple about raising
the prices of his large stock. "A good time is
coming, sir, for printers and booksellers," says Mr.
Scot. "Ah, Jacob," exclaims Mr. Tonson, "if I
hadn't a noble profession for you to follow, I should
like to see you a bookseller."

Two years have elapsed. The good chirurgeon has
fallen sick ; and not even his conversion to Dr. Har-
vey's opinions " concerning the motion of the heart
and blood" can save him. Young Jacob had em-
ployed most of his holiday hours in reading plays and
poems, and he had a decided aversion to the business
carried on " under the pole." His father had left his
brother Eichard, himself, and his three sisters, one

CHAP. III. JACOB TOXSON. 51

hundred pounds each, to be paid them upon their
coming of age. The two brothers resolved for print-
ing and bookselling. Jacob was apprenticed, on the
5th of June, 1670, to Thomas Basset, bookseller ; he
was then of the age of fourteen. I scarcely need
trace the shadow of the boy growing up into a young
man, and learning, what a practical experience only
can give, to form a due estimate of the trade-value
of books, and the commercial reputation of authors.
After seven years he was admitted to his freedom in
the Stationers' Company, and immediately afterwards
commenced business with his capital of a hundred
pounds. The elder brother had embarked in the
same calling a year before. Thus, at the beginning
of 1678, he entered "the realms of print" — a region
not then divided into so many provinces as now.
Under " The Judge's Head," which he set up as his
sign in Chancery Lane, close to the corner of Fleet
Street, he might have an open window, and exhibit,
upon a capacious board, old law books and new plays,
equally vendible in that vicinity of the inns of court.
But he had a higher ambition than to be a mere
vender of books. He would purchase and print ori-
ginal writings, and he would aim at securing " the
most eminent hands." He published before 1679
some of the plays of Otway and Tate. But he aimed
at more illustrious game. I see him as he sits in his
back shop, pondering over such reputations. Mr.
Otway's 'Friendship in Fashion' is somewhat too
gross, and his 'Cams Marius' has been stolen, in
great part, from Shakspere. As for Mr. Tate, he

E2

52 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. III.

may be fit to mangle 'King Lear,' but he has no
genius. Could he get hold of Mr. Dryden! He,
indeed, were worth having. Mr. Herringman has
been Mr. Dryden's publisher, but the young aspirant
hears of some disagreement. He will step over to
the great writer's house near St. Bride's Church,
and make a bidding for his next play. ' Troilus and
Cressida; or, Truth found too late,' was published
by Tonsou and Swalle, in 1679. The venture
of twenty pounds for the copy is held to have
been too large for our Jacob to have encountered
singly.

Let me endeavour to realize the shadow of the
figure and deportment of the young bookseller. He
is in his twenty-third year, short and stout. Twenty
years later, Pope calls him "little Jacob." It was
not till after his death that he became immortalized
in the 'Dunciad' as "left-legg'd Jacob." In one
previous edition, Lintot, " with steps unequal ;" in
another, " with legs expanded," " seemed to emulate
great Jacob's pace." The "two left legs," as well
as "leering looks," "bull face," and "Judas-coloured
hair," are attributed to Dryden's pen in a satirical
description of ' Bibliopolo,' a fragment of which is
inserted in a virulent Tory poem, published at the
time when Tonson was Secretary of the Kit-Cat Club,
composed of the Whigs most distinguished as states-
men and writers. In a dialogue between Tonson
and Congreve, published in 1714, in a small volume
of poems by Eowe, there is a pleasant description of
Tonson before he had grand associates —

CHAP. III. JACOB TONSOX. 53

" While, in your early days of reputation,
You for blue garters had not such a passion,
While yet you did not li ve, as now your trade is,
To drink with noble lords, and toast their ladies,
Thou, Jacob Tonson, were, to my conceiving,
The cheerfullest, best, honest fellow living."

After this, the eulogy of John Dunton is somewhat
flat: — "He was bookseller to the famous Dryden,
and is himself a very good judge of persons and
authors ; and, as there is nobody more competently
qualified to give their opinion upon another, so there
is none who does it with a more sevese exactness, or
with less partiality ; for, to do Mr. Tonson justice, he
speaks his mind upon all occasions, and will flatter
nobody."

The young bookseller is gradually attaining a posi-
tion. In 1681 there was an indefatigable collector
of the fugitive poetry, especially political, which
formed the chief staple of many booksellers' shops,
and the most vendible commodity of the noisy
hawkers. Mr. Narcissus Luttrell recorded — accord-
ing to his custom of marking on each sheet and half-
sheet of the * Sibylline Leaves ' the day he acquired
it — that on the 17th of November he received a copy
of the first part of ' Absalom and Achitophel,' " from
his friend Jacob Tonson." Dryden and his publisher
appear to be on a very friendly footing in 1684. He
sends the poet a present of two melons ; and the poet,
in his letter of thanks, advises him to reprint ' Lord
Eoscommon's Essay on Translated Verse,' and to
print a thousand copies. Dryden was now at work
upon the ' Miscellany Poems ; ' that collection which

54 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. III.

is sometimes called ' Tonson's,' and sometimes
' Dryden's.' According to the fashion of title-pages at
that time, it was to be written " by the most eminent
hands." The poet writes, " Since we are to have
nothing but new, I am resolved we will have nothing
but good, whomever we disoblige." The first volume
was published in 1684 ; a second volume appeared in
1685. Malone says, " This was the first collection of
that kind which had appeared for many years in
England." The third ' Miscellany ' was published
in 1693. Tonson has now become a sharp trades-
man. A letter from him to Dryden exhibits him
haggling about the number of lines he ought to
receive of the translation of parts of Ovid. He had
only 1446 for fifty guineas, whereas he expected
1518 lines for forty guineas. He is, nevertheless,
humbly submissive. " I own, if you don't think fit
to add something more, I must submit ; 'tis wholly at
your choice." Still holding to his maxim to have a
pennyworth for his penny, he adds : " You were pleased
to use me much kindlier in Juvenal, which is not
reckoned so easy to translate as Ovid." Although
the bookseller seems mercenary enough to justify
Malone's remark that " by him who is to live by the
sale of books, a book is considered merely as an
article of trade," Dryden soon after writes to Tonson,
" I am much ashamed of myself that I am so much
behindhand with you in kindness. Above all things,
I am sensible of your good nature in bearing me
company to this place " (somewhere in Northampton-
shire).

Dryden could now ill afford to be curtailed in the

CHAP. III. JACOB TOXSOX. 55

bookseller's payment for his verses. The Kevolntion
had deprived him of his office of Poet-Laureate ; but
he might do better than writing ' Miscellany Poems '
at the rate of ninepence a line. He will publish a
specimen of his translation of Virgil in the 'Mis-
cellany,' but he will produce the complete work by
subscription. Tonson shall be his agent for printing
the volumes, with engravings. The plan succeeds.
There are large-paper copies for the rich and great ;
there are small-paper copies for a second-class of sub-
scribers. " Be ready with the price of paper and of
the books," writes Dryden. They were to meet at
a tavern. " No matter for any dinner ; for that is
a charge to you, and I care not for it. Mr. Congreve
may be with us, as a common friend." Few were the
literary bargains that were settled without a dinner.
Fewer, indeed, were the coffee-house meetings be-
tween author and bookseller that were not accom-
panied with that solace which was called a " whet."
Their business is completed. Mr. Dryden goes again
into the country for his poetical labours and his fish-
ing. Mr. Tonson is " My good friend," and " I assure
you I lay up your last kindnesses to me in my heart."
But a terrible subject of dispute is coming up which
much perplexes the bookseller. In October, 1695,
the poet writes, " I expect fifty pounds in good silver :
not such as I had formerly. I am not obliged to
take gold, neither will I, nor stay for it beyond four-
and-twenty hours after it is due." The sellers and
the buyers in all trades are sorely disturbed in their
calculations, whilst Charles Montague, and Locke,
and Newton, are thinking over the best means for a

56 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. III.

reform of the coinage. Mr. Tonson's customers give
him bad silver for his books, and Mr. Dryden's sub-
scribers for his five-guinea edition would take care
not to pay the bookseller at the rate of twenty-one
shillings for each golden piece whose exchangeable
value is increased forty per cent. When the author
writes, "I expect fifty pounds in good silver," he
demands an impossibility. All the " good silver "
was hoarded. When he says, " I am not obliged to
take gold," he means that he was not obliged to take
guineas at their market value as compared with the
clipped and debased silver. Cunningham, a historian
of the period, says, " Guineas on a sudden rose to
thirty shillings a piece — all currency of other money
was stopped." Dryden was, in the end, compelled to
submit to the common fate of all who had to receive
money in exchange for labour or goods. So the poet
squabbles with his publisher into the next year, and
the publisher — of whose arguments in his self-defence
we hear nothing — gets hard measure from the his-
torian one hundred and fifty years afterwards. " The
ignorant and helpless peasant," says Macaulay, " was
cruelly ground between one class which would give
money only by tale, and another which would take it
only by weight ; yet his sufferings hardly exceeded
those of the unfortunate race of authors. Of the way
in which obscure writers were treated we may easily
form a judgment from the letters, still extant, of
Dryden to his bookseller Tonson." The poet's com-
plaints, presented without any attendant circum-
stances, and with some suppression, would seem to
imply that Tonson attempted to cheat Dryden as he

CHAP III. JACOB TONSOX. 57

would have attempted to cheat obscure writers. But
Macaulay justly says, "These complaints and de-
mands, which have been preserved from destruction
only by the eminence of the writer, are doubtless
merely a fair example of the correspondence which
filled all the mail -bags of England for several
mouths."

Keconciliation soon comes. The business inter-
course of Dryden and Tonson continues uninterrupted.
Jacob, we may believe, sometimes meditates upon
the possible loss of his great friend. Will any
poetical genius arise worthy to take his place ? He
thinks not. He must look around him, and see which
of the old writers can be successfully reproduced,
like the Milton, which he has now made his own, as
the world may observe in the portrait which Sir
Godfrey Kneller has painted for him, with * Paradise
Lost ' in his hand.

I see the shadow of a younger Jacob Tonson than
he who is thus represented in the engraving. I see
him bargaining, in 1683, with Brabazon Aylmer, for
one-half of his interest in Milton's poem. Aylmer
produces the document which transfers to him the
entire copyright, signed by Samuel Simmons; and
he exhibits also the original covenant of indenture,
by which Milton sold to Simmons his copy for an
immediate payment of five pounds, with a stipulation
for other payments, according to the future sales —
twenty pounds in the whole. Mr. Tonson thinks
that the value of other literary wares than " prologues
and plays" has risen in the market. He could
scarcely have dreamt, however, that the time would

58 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. III.

come when a hundred guineas would be given for
this very indenture, and that it would be preserved
in a national museum as a sacred treasure. He buys
a half of Aylmer's interest, and has many cogitations
about the best mode of making profit out of his
bargain. The temper of the times, and the fashion-
able tastes, are not propitious to blank verse upon
a sacred subject; and the name of Milton, the
Secretary of the late Usurper, is held in hatred.
It is true that Mr. Dryden had said that this was one
of the greatest, most noble, and most sublime poems
which either the age or nation had produced ; but
the prudent Jacob would pause a little. The time
might come when he who sang of " man's first dis-
obedience" would not be hated by the clergy, and
when Rochester would not be the fashion at court.
He waited four years, and then issued proposals for
publishing ' Paradise Lost ' by subscription. He was
encouraged in this undertaking by two persons of
some influence — John Somers, who had written
verses and other things for him, a barrister; and
Francis Atterbury, a student of Christ Church.
There is sufficient encouragement to proceed ; and
so, in 1688, Milton comes forth in folio, with a
portrait, under which are engraven certain lines
which Dryden had furnished to his publisher. Times
were changed since Samuel Simmons paid his
five pounds down for the copy, and agreed to pay five
pounds more when thirteen hundred were sold. And
so Mr. Dryden was not altogether opposed to the
critical opinions of the existing generation when he
wrote that "the force of Nature could no farther

CHAP. III. JACOB TOXSOX. 59

go " when she united Homer and Virgil in Milton.
Dryden not only gave his famous six lines to Tonson,
but paid his crowns as a subscriber.

It is Saint Cecilia's Day, the 22nd of November,
1697. Mr. Tonson has seen the manuscript of Mr.
Dryden's Ode or Song, to be performed at the Music
Feast kept in Stationers' Hall — "the Anniversary
Feast of the Society of Gentlemen, lovers of musick."
Mr. Tonson has attended many of these performances
in his own hall, and was particularly interested in
one a few years before, for which his distinguished
friend wrote the Ode. But on this latter occasion,
as earnest Jacob tells to every one who will listen to
him, Mr. Dryden has surpassed himself. Never, he
thinks, and thinks truly, has there been so glorious
an Ode as Alexander's Feast. His notions differed
somewhat from the majority of the audience assem-
bled on that occasion, who were accustomed to attach
more importance to the music than to the words of
the annual song of praise. Purcell died two years
before, and Dryden wrote his elegy. One of less
renown, Jeremiah Clarke, of the Chapel Royal, is
now the composer. A great musician was to arise,
in another generation, whose music should be married
to this immortal verse. But the noble Ode can well
stand alone.

The Ode to Saint Cecilia formed a part of the
volume of ' Fables ' which Tonson published just
before the poet's death. In December, 1699, Dryden
had finished the work, with a preface written in
his usual pure and vigorous prose. He was paid
by Tonson two hundred and fifty guineas, with an

60 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLEES. CHAP. III.

engagement to make up that amount to three hun-
dred pounds when a second impression should be
demanded. It was thirteen years before such second
edition was published. In May, 1700, the bookseller's
first great patron died.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century Tonson
purchased a small house adjoining the mansion of
Barn Elms, near the village of Barnes. Count Hei-
degger, the founder of Italian operas, resided in the
mansion. G-eorge II. was here entertained with dis-
plays of fireworks and illuminated lamps ; but the
" boets and bainters," who were not in good odour
with the Hanoverian dynasty, conferred a lustre upon
Barn Elms which did not go out quite so quickly as
Heidegger's fireworks. Jacob's villa, originally little
more than a cottage, was a pleasanter summer place
of meeting for the Kit-Cat Club than the Cat and
Fiddle in Shire-lane, or the Fountain in the Strand.
Like other clubable men, its members wrere fond of
country excursions. They had occasional meetings
at the Upper Flask on Hampstead Heath, but their
most glorious epoch is ever associated with Barn
Elms. Tonson's villa has gone into ruin, with the
famous room which he built for the meetings of
the Club, whose walls were hung with the portraits
of the members. Nearly half a century ago, their
condition was described with some graphic power, by
Sir Kichard Phillips. He says: "A lane, in the
north-west corner of the common, brought me to
Barnes' Elms, where now resides a Mr. Hoare, a
banker of London. The family were not at home ;
but, on asking the servants if that was the house of

CHAP. III. JACOB TONSON. 61

Mr. Tonson, they assured me, with great simplicity,
that no such gentleman lived there. I named the
Kit-Cat Club, as accustomed to assemble here ; but
the oddity of the name excited their ridicule, and
I was told that no such Club was held there ; but
perhaps, said one to the other, the gentleman means
the Club that assembles at the public house on the
Common. Knowing, however, that I was at the
right place, I could not avoid expressing my vexation
that the periodical assemblage of the first men of
their age should be so entirely forgotten by those
who now reside on the spot; when one of them
exclaimed, 'I should not wonder if the gentleman
means the philosophers' room ! " He was con-
ducted across a detached garden, and brought to a
handsome structure, evidently the building which
he sought. The decayed door was unfastened, and he
entered a once elegant hall, whose ceiling had par-
tially fallen. He ascended a dilapidated staircase,
not without danger. "But," he continues, "I was
well repaid for my pains. Here I found the Kit-Cat
Club-room, nearly as it existed in the days of its
glory. It is eighteen feet high, and forty feet long
by twenty feet wide. The mouldings and ornaments
were in the most superb fashion of its age; but
the whole was falling to pieces, from the effects of the
dry rot. My attention was chiefly attracted by
the faded cloth-hanging of the room, whose red colour
once set oif the famous portraits of the Club that
hung around it. Their marks and sizes were still
visible, and the numbers and names remained as
written in chalk, for the guidance of the hangers.
Tims was I, as it were, by these still legible names,

62 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. III.

brought into personal contact with Addison, Steele,
and Congreve, and Garth, and Dryden, and with
many hereditary nobles, remembered only because
they were patrons of those natural nobles !" * j

The origin and early history of the Kit-Cat Club
are shrouded in the " darkness visible " of the past.
Fable and tradition assert their claims to be inter-
preters, as in the greater subject of the beginning of
nations. Elkanah Settle, whose name has been
preserved, like a fly in amber, by Dryden's bitter
description of him under the name of Doeg, addressed
in 1699 a manuscript poem " To the most renowned
the President and the rest of the Knights of the
most noble Order of the Toast." In these verses
the City poet asserted the dignity of this illustrious
society. Malone supposes the president to have been
Lord Dorset or Mr. Montague, and the Order of the
Toast to have been identical with the Kit-Cat Club.
The toasting glasses of this association had verses
engraven upon them which might have perished with
their fragile vehicle had they not been preserved in
Tonson's fifth Miscellany, as verses by Halifax,
Congreve, Granville, Addison, Garth, and others of
the rhyming and witty companionship, whose toasts,
as was irreverently written, were in honour of old
cats and young kits. This ingenious derivation is
ascribed to Arbuthnot. There was a writer of a far
lower grade — the scurrilous Ned Ward — who, in his
' Secret History of Clubs,' gives a circumstantial
account of the origin of the Kit-Cat in connection
with Jacob Tonson. It was founded, he said, "by
an amphibious mortal, chief merchant to the Muses."
* ' A Morning's Walk from London to Kew,' 1817, pp. 201-204.

CHAP. III. JACOB TOXSOX. 63

According to Ward's narrative, we see the shadow
of Jacob Tonson, as drawn by a party caricaturist,
waiting hopefully in his shop for the arrival of some
one or more of " his new profitable chaps, who, having
more wit than experience, put but a slender value
as yet upon their maiden performances." The exact
locality, made illustrious by Christopher Katt and
his mutton-pies, is held by Ned Ward to have been
Gray's Inn-lane; by other and better authorities
Shire-lane, and subsequently the Fountain Tavern in
the Strand. Mr. Tonson, then, in accordance with the
custom of the tunes, was always ready to propose a
"whet " to his authors, but he now added a pastry enter-
tainment. At length, according to the satirist, Jacob
proposed a weekly meeting, where he would con-
tinue the like feast, provided his friends would give
him the refusal of all their juvenile productions.
This " generous proposal was very readily agreed to
by the whole poetic class, and the cook's name being
Christopher, for brevity called Kit, and his sign
being the Cat and Fiddle, they very merrily derived
a quaint denomination from puss and. her master,
and from thence called themselves the Kit-Cat Club."
Ward goes on to say that the club, having usurped
the bays from all the town, " many of the quality
grew fond of sharing the everlasting honour that
was likely to crown the poetical society."

There probably never existed a club whose members
have had such a happy chance of their memories
being preserved for the admiration or indifference of
posterity as those of the Kit-Cat. Many of them are
important figures in the state history of their country
and in the history of its literature. Others have

G4 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. III.

passed on to the obscurity of mere Lord Cham-
berlains and Grooms of the Stole ; whilst some of
the versifiers and wits of their day have written their
names upon the sands of the ebbing tide which the
next flood obliterates. But they each of them were
painted by Kneller. The pictures are still in the
possession of Mr. R. W. Baker, the representative
of the Tonson family, at Bayfordbury, in Hert-
fordshire. Some of them, from time to time, have
been publicly exhibited, as was the case in the
Manchester Exhibition of 1857. All the portraits,
engraved by Faber, were published the year before
the death of Jacob Tonson. They were re-engraved
in 1821, accompanied by ' Memoirs of the Celebrated
Persons composing the Kit-Cat Club. ' These me-
moirs are, with some justice, described by the
* Quarterly Review ' of 1822, as " one of the most
blundering pieces of patchwork that the scissors of
a hackney editor ever produced." It certainly is
one of the dullest of books, manufactured out of the
commonest materials. The portraits, it is also said
by this unsparing critic, are "deficient in charac-
teristic resemblance." That sort of family likeness
here prevails which is to be found in all Kneller's
faces — a quality described also as " a monotony in
the countenances, and a want of spirit in the figures."
This volume, by which I may trace my course as by
a catalogue, in calling up some of the Shadows asso-
ciated in this club with Jacob Tonson, brings them
before me, nearly all in the full-bottomed peruke
of the Court. The men of letters, however, aifected
this not ungraceful head decoration. Farquhar, in
1698, makes " the full wig as infallible a token of

CHAP. III. JACOB TOXSON. 65

wit as the laurel." Some of the grandees show with
ribbons and stars and white staffs ; many of them
are hi the neglige costume which the painter often
adopted — more artistic, perhaps, than the lace cravat
and the embroidered coat. Only a very few are in
the cap in which Tonson himself is depicted, but
some of these are lords.

First, let me call up the great Sir Godfrey him-
self, state painter to five sovereigns. He was equally
favoured by Charles II., James II., William III.,
Anne, and George I. The German artist must have
been exceedingly discreet in his politics and his reli-
gion to have begun life with Toryism and Popery ;
to have gone on happily with those who accomplished
the Ee volution ; and to have ended his days amongst
some of the staunchest adherents of the Protestant
cause, the boon companions of his Kit-Cat family at
Barn Elms. He must have been an amusing asso-
ciate when his inordinate vanity was unlocked by
good cheer. He would there scarcely venture to
relate that famous vision of his which he described
to Pope. He dreamt that he was dead, when,
encountering St. Peter, the apostle very civilly
asked his name. " I said it was Kneller. I had no
sooner said so, than St. Luke, who was standing
close by, turned towards me, and said, with a great
deal of sweetness, 'What, the famous Sir Godfrey
Kneller from England?' ' The very same, sir,' said
I ; 'at your service.' " * It is related, upon the
authority of Pope, that Tonson got a good many fine
portraits, and two of himself, by flattering Kneller's

* ' Spence's Anecdotes,' section 4.

F

6<5 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLEES. CHAP. III.

vanity. I may picture the bookseller whispering
into his ear at the Kit-Cat dinners, that he was the
greatest master that ever was. That might be suffi-
cient when the flattery was accompanied by the
feast, but there were sometimes dull intervals when
the Kit-Cat room no longer echoed the toasts of
lords and the jokes of wits. The bookseller must
then propitiate the painter in some other way.
" Oh ! " said Kneller, with his usual oath, to Vander
Guteht, " this old Jacob loves me ; he is a very good
man ; you see he loves me, he sends me good
things ; the venison was fat." *

I pass on to another personage, who is charac-
terised by an essentially different ruling passion
from that of Sir Godfrey. The "proud" Duke
of Somerset was the first of the members of the
Kit-Cat who sat for his portrait, for the purpose
of presenting it to Mr. Tonson, the secretary of the
club. I hesitate in giving implicit credence to
the stories that are related of this Whig partisan
by the Tory writers, such as, that he would never
suffer his children to sit in his presence, and that}
not deigning to speak to servants, he gave his orders
by signs. It seems scarcely consistent that this
inordinately haughty peer should write to a trades-
man who kept an open book-shop in a public
thoroughfare, " our club is dissolved till you revive
it again, which we are impatient of." This was in
June, 1703, when Tonson had made a trip to
Holland, to purchase paper for his noble edition
-;-X Caesar. At that exact period Vaubrugh, who

VI

* ' Richardsoniana,' quoted in Singer's edition of Spence.

CHAP. III. JACOB TOXSON. 67

seems to have been his constant friend and corre-
spondent, writes to him at Amsterdam, "In short,
the Kit-Cat wants you much more than you ever can
do them. Those who remain in town are in great
desire of waiting on you at Barn Elms; not that
they have finished their pictures neither ; though, to
excuse them as well as myself, Sir Godfrey has been
most in fault. The fool has got a country house
near Hampton Court, and is so busy in fitting it up
(to receive nobody) that there is no ^getting him to
work." Yanbrugh had recollections of Tonson's villa
which were not associated with its ceremonial
banquets. Writing to Tonson in 1725, he says,
" From Woodstock we went to Lord Cobham's,
seeing Middleton-Stony by the way, and eating a
cheerful cold loaf at a very humble ale-house: I
think the best meal I ever ate, except the first
supper in the kitchen at Barnes."

Richard Tonson, the descendant of the old book-
seller, who resided at Water-Oakley, on the banks
of the Thames, added a room to the villa which he
inherited, on whose spacious walls the portraits were
hung, not so completely in the style of a master of
the ceremonies, as in the memoir-writer's series
of engravings. This latter Tonson, one of the repre-
sentatives for Windsor, was a partner with his
brother, the third Jacob, in the old bookselling
business in the Strand, and may, therefore, be ex-
cused for having, with his trade notion of great
names, placed together in close companionship,
Dryden, Vanbrugh, Congreve, Addison, Garth, and
Steele. In my discursive fashion, I shall venture to

F2

68 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. III.

depart from both the arrangements. Peers, without
any intermixture of plebeian blood, are not con-
sidered to be the liveliest of companions. I think
I may also take the liberty of saying that a knot of
six authors of our own time — though not exactly
possessing the qualities attributed to the tribe —
" So very clever, anxious, fine, and jealous — "

would not come up to the ordinary expectation that
nothing but pearls would drop from their mouths.

In the Water-Oakley arrangement, the door of the
room cuts off Tonson from Dryden, who is not given
in the engraved series. It may be doubted whether
Dryden took his place as a member of the Kit-Cat
Club, or was introduced by Jacob, or by Jacob's de-
scendant, out of respect to the great name by which
the son of the barber-surgeon of Holborn was first
brought into notice.* As I have intimated, there was
no cause of discord between the poet and the book-
seller, when the translator of Virgil might expect, like
Dante, to be conducted through the unknown regions
by his great original. Dryden had no doubt forgiven
the offence which Jacob had committed a few years
before. Although the poet had refused his request
to dedicate his translation to King William, the pub-
lisher nevertheless " prepared the book for it ; for
in every figure of Mneas he has caused him to be
drawn, like King William, with a hooked nose." t

* The arrangement of the portraits at Water-Oakley is given
in Nichols's ' Literary Anecdotes,' vol. i. 1812. Phillips men-
tions Dryden as amongst the names he saw chalked on the walls
of the ruinous Barn Elms room.

t Drvden's letter to his son Charles.

CHAP. III. JACOB TOXSOX. 69

Iii the arrangement of the Kit-Cat portraits by
Tonson's successor, the secretary of the club is very
properly placed next to Vanbrugh. In Rowe's verses,
a stanza of which has already been quoted, Tonsou
is made to say : —

" I'm in with Captain Vanbrugh at the present,
A most sweet-natured gentleman and pleasant :
He writes you comedies, draws schemes, and models,
And builds dukes' houses upon very odd hills."

The architect of Blenheim and Castle Howard was
laughed at by his brother wits, and sneered at by the
pretender to taste who believed that his Strawberry
Hill was pure Gothic. In a subsequent age Reynolds
came to the rescue of his memory, as a great master
of his art, from the attacks of Pope, and Swift, and
Walpole. In the Kit-Cat Club Vanbrugh might
have met with the Duke of Marlborough and the
Earl of Carlisle, and this companionship might have
led to his employment as an architect. However
elevated he might have been in wealth and rank, he
does not forget the old associations of Barn Elms, a
quarter of a century after the first merry meetings
there of the club. I see the Shadow of Tonson, now
really old Jacob, reading with intense delight a letter
written by Vanbrugh in 1727, the year before his
death : — " You may believe me, when I tell you, you
were often talked of both during the journey and at
Stowe ; and our former Kit-Cat days were remembered
with pleasure; we were one night reckoning who
were left, and both Lord Carlisle and Cobham ex-
pressed a great desire of having one meeting next
winter, if you came to town — not as a club, but

70 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. III.

old friends that have been of a club, and the best club
that ever met." And yet the prejudiced and ignorant
compiler of the Kit-Cat memoirs says, " The book-
sellers of those days were a set of heavy, vulgar, and
ignorant traders. Notwithstanding their opportuni-
ties of associating with the more enlightened orders
of the community, they never seem to have acquired
either information or polish. Jacob Tonson was a
happy specimen of the literary turn-pennies of his
day."

The history of the Kit-Cat Club would be far more
intelligible could I trace the dates of the admission
of members. Club records are perishable commo-
dities ; and there are none remaining of the Kit-Cat
Club. Ned Ward tells us that the banter upon
Dryden's 'Hind and Panther,' called 'The City
Mouse and Country Mouse,' stole into the world out
of the witty society of the Kit-Cat. This joint pro-
duction of Prior and Charles Montague was published
in 1687, much to the annoyance of Dryden, who
thought it hard that two young fellows, to whom he
had been civil, should set the town laughing at him.
Charles Montague, Earl of Halifax, was painted by
Kneller amongst the Kit-Cat portraits. Prior does
not appear in this collection. Between 1687 and
1703, when the club had a settled locality at Barn
Elms, Montague had well pushed his fortunes —
to adopt Johnson's words — as an " artful and active
statesman, employed in balancing parties, contriving
expedients, and combating opposition." His qualities
as a writer have ceased to interest ; but, as a patron
of letters, at the period before reliance was placed

CHAP. III. JACOB TONSON. 71

upon that greater patron the public, who is not to be
flattered into complacency by dedications and odes,
his memory has survived. " From the moment,"
says Macaulay, " at which he began to distinguish
himself in public life, he ceased to be a versifier. . . .
He wisely determined to derive from the poetry of
others a glory which he never could have derived
from his own. As a patron of genius and learning
he ranks with his two illustrious friends, Dorset and
Somers." Both the eminent men thus referred to
were members of the Kit-Cat, and are amongst the
foremost of those who justify the eulogy of Horace
Walpole : " The Kit-Cat Club, though generally
mentioned as a set of wits, were, in fact, the patriots
that saved Britain."

Amongst the nobles and statesmen of the period
that have been made so familiar to us by the eloquent
narrative of Macaulay, and who are represented in
Kneller's Kit-Cat portraits, we find that of one who
has been " damned to everlasting fame," not only by
the great historian, but by the great novelist. If we
would study the character of one of the most wicked
nobles of that day, we may turn to Macaulay 's His-
tory, and Thackeray's ' Esmond.' How Charles Lord
Mohun could have become a member of any decent
society after his participation in the murder of Mount-
ford the actor, in 1692, it would be difficult to con-
jecture. There were few peers, I may believe, of
the Kit-Cat Club who, whatever might have been
their motive for the verdict of "Not Guilty" upon
Mohnn's trial before the Lord High Steward, would
have applauded the saying of one great nobleman

72 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. III.

— " After all the fellow was but a player ; and
players are rogues." Spence has preserved a satis-
factory anecdote of our friend the bookseller, as told
him by Pope, which evidently refers to the early days
of the club. " The master of the house where the
club met was Christopher Katt, Tonson was secretary.
The day Lord Mohun and the Earl of Berkley were
entered of it, Jacob said he saw they were just going
to be ruined. When Lord Mohun broke down the
gilded emblem on the top of his chair, Jacob com-
plained to his friends, and said, 'that a man who
would do that, would cut a man's throat.' So that
he had the good and the forms of the society much
at heart."

Thirty years after the Kit-Cat Club had taken its
station at Barn Elms, Pope, in his first satire, pub-
lished in 1733, celebrated a distinguished epicure of
that period : —

" Each mortal has his pleasure ; none deny
Scarsdale his bottle, Darty his ham-pie."

Darty was Charles Dartiquenave, or Dartineuf. The
famous lover of " ham-pie" might have been one of
the early members of the Kit-Cat, who rejoiced in
Christopher Katt's "mutton-pies." Swift describes
him to Stella as " the man who knows everthing and
that everybody knows, and where a knot of rabble
are going on a holiday, and where they were last."
He wrote a paper in ' The Tatler' on the use of wine,
in which Addison is supposed to be pointed at. " I
have the good fortune to be intimate with a gentle-
man who has an inexhaustible source of wit to enter-
tain the curious, the grave, the humorous, and the

CHAP. III. JACOB TOXSOX. 73

frolic. He can transform himself into different
shapes, and adapt himself to every company ; yet, in
a coffee-house, or in the ordinary course of affairs,
appears rather dull than sprightly. You can seldom
get him to the tavern ; but when once he is arrived
to his pint, and begins to look about, and like his
company, you admire a thousand things in him which
before lay buried. Then you discover the brightness
of bis mind and the strength of his judgment, accom-
panied with the most graceful mirth." *

It is scarcely necessary that I should notice Addison
or Steele as members of the Kit-Cat Club, except as
they hover round the Shadow of Jacob Tonson. The
bookseller, it would appear from Pope's representa-
tions, had no great affection for the famous essayist : —
" Old Jacob Tonson did not like Mr. Addison. He
had a quarrel with him, and, after his quitting the
secretaryship, used frequently to say of him : * One
day or other you'll see that man a bishop ! I'm sure
he looks that way ; and indeed I ever thought him
a priest in his heart' " In Spence's ' Anecdotes '
Tonson is made to say : " Addison was so eager to be
the first name, that he and his friend Sir Kichard
Steele used to run down even Dryden's character as
far as they could. Pope and Congreve used to support
it." Tonson, indeed, appears to have been chivalrously
faithful to his first great friend. There is a curious
letter addressed to him by Dennis the critic, in 1715,
which thus begins : — " When I had the good fortune
to meet you in the City, it was with concern that I
heard from you of the attempt to lessen the reputa-

* Quoted in Mr. Carruthers' ' Pope,' vol. ii. p. 445.

74 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. III.

tion of Mr. Dryden ; and 'tis with indignation that
I have since learnt that that attempt has chiefly been
carried on by small poets." Pope is here the jealous
rival who is pointed at. One more anecdote which
Spence gives, on the authority of Dr. Leigh : — " Mr.
Addison was not a good-natured man, and very jealous
of rivals. Being one evening in company with Philips,
and the poems of Blenheim and the Campaign being
talked of, he made it his whole business to run down
blank-verse. Philips never spoke till between eleven
and twelve o'clock, nor even then could do it in his
own defence. It was at Jacob Tonson's ; and a gentle-
man in company ended the dispute, by asking Jacob
what poem he ever got the most by ? Jacob imme-
diately named Milton's ' Paradise Lost.' "

The statesmen of the Kit-Cat Club — " the patriots
that saved Britain " — thus lived in social union with
the Whig writers who were devoted to the chiefs of
the party that opened their road to preferment.
This band of orators and wits were naturally hateful
to the Tory authors that Harley and Bolingbroke
were nursing into the bitter satirists of the weekly
sheets. Jacob Tonson of course came in for a due
share of invective. In a poem entitled 'Factions
Displayed' he is ironically introduced as "the touch-
stone of all modern wit ;" and he is made to vilify the
great ones of Barn Elms : —

" I am the founder of your loved Kit- Cat,
A club that gave direction to the State ;
'Twas there we first instructed all our youth
To talk profane and laugh at sacred truth ;
We taught them how to boast, and rhyme, and bite,
To sleep away the day, and drink away the night."

CHAP. III. JACOB TOXSON. 75

Tonson may be deemed the prince of booksellers
in his association with some of the most eminent men
of his own time. But the mighty ones of the past
had not less to do than the living in the establish-
ment of his fortune and his fame. He identified
himself with Milton by first making ' Paradise Lost '
popular. A few years after, when he moved from
his old shop in Chancery Lane, he no longer traded
under the sign of " The Judge's Head," but set up
" Shakspere's Head." He was truly the first book-
seller who threw open Shakspere to a reading public.
The four folio editions had become scarce even in his
time. The third folio was held to have been destroyed
in the fire of London. In 1709 Tonson produced
Rowe's edition in octavo. Bernard Lintot the elder,
who about the same time republished Shakspere's
Poems, expresses himself in his advertisement as if
Tonson's speculation were an experiment not ab-
solutely certain of success: — "The writings of Mr.
Shakspere are in so great esteem that several gentle-
men have subscribed to a late edition of his Dramatic
Works in six volumes, which makes me hope that
this little book will not be unacceptable to the public."
Tonson and his family were long associated with edi-
tions of Shakspere. Eowe, Pope, Theobald, Warburton,
Johnson, and Capell, were liberally paid by the Ton-
sons for their editorial services — as liberally, perhaps,
as the demand of a new reading public would allow.

76 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. IV.

CHAPTER IV.

THOMAS GENT, PRINTER, OF YORK.

OUT HEY, ill his most amusing volume
of < The Doctor,' writes in Chapter CXIV.,
" If I were given to prolixity and allowed
myself to be led away, I might here be
tempted to relate certain particulars concerning
Thomas Gent." In the previous chapter Southey
says, " His autobiography is as characteristic as John
Dunton's, and, like it, contains much information
relating to the state of the press in his days, and the
trade of literature." Of some of these matters the
author of ' The Doctor ' gives a very brief notice, and,
as stated in his heading of Chapter CXIV., only
" hints at certain circumstances in the life of Thomas
Gent, on which he does not think it necessary to
dwell." The autobiography from which these " cer-
tain circumstances" are derived was published in
1832 by Mr. Thomas Thorpe, which celebrated book-
seller met with the MS. in a collection of books that
he had purchased in Ireland. Without being " given
to prolixity," I may take this memoir of Thomas
Gent, written in his own hand in 1746, as the ground-
work of a chapter essentially connected with "the
subject before me."

Thomas Gent, though of English extraction, was

CHAP. IV. THOMAS GEXT. 77

born of humble parents in Dublin. He was appren-
ticed to a printer of that city, who used him so brutally
that, having served three years of his time, he ran
away, in August, 1710, with seventeen pence in his
pocket. Having got into the hold of a vessel bound
for England, he met with kind usage from the cap-
tain, and was landed at Park-gate. Setting forward
towards Chester, he tried there to obtain employment ;
" but then no printing-press, as I could hear of, was
set up in those parts." He reached St. Albans with
twopence in his pocket, but there found a good land-
lord, who, observing him very lame and tired, gave
him food and lodging. There is now a break in the
narrative ; but when it is resumed we find him in the
employ of Mr. Midwinter, a London printer, who
carried on his trade at Pie Comer. His labour in
this servitude, where he remained until he was about
twenty years old, appears to have been severe and
incessant, "working many times from five in the
morning till twelve at night, and frequently without
food from breakfast time till five or six in the evening,
through our hurry with hawkers"

Let me diverge a little from my pursuit of the
shadow of Thomas Gent, to glance at that large
portion of the printing and bookselling business of
London which was chiefly carried on by hawkers.
This business was in full activity when Gent arrived
in London in 1710. It soon received a heavy blow,
whose consequences were thus anticipated by Swift
in his ' Journal to Stella,' January 31, 1711 : " They
are here intending to tax all little printed penny
papers, a halfpenny every half-sheet, which will

78 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. IV.

utterly ruin Grub-street." Swift's definition of Grub-
street, as the generic name for the literature of
hawkers, has superseded that of Johnson, in his Dic-
tionary, in which, with a sly humour, he points at
his own avocations : " Originally the name of a street
near Moorfields, in London, much inhabited by writers
of small histories, dictionaries, and temporary poems ;
whence any mean production is called grub-street"
The actual Grub-street has of late years been refined
into Milton-street. The name might not have looked
quite so genteel on a great haberdasher's bill of par-
cels, but it has literary associations which have their
significance in connection with the history of an
interesting period. When Hoole, the translator of
* Tasso,' told Johnson he was born in Moorfields, and
had received part of his early instruction in Grub-
street : " Sir," said Johnson, " you have been regu-
larly educated." The polite changers of the vulgar
name sought to justify their act by alleging that
Grub-street was very near Cripplegate Church where
Milton was buried.

In spite of Swift's prediction, Grub-street was not
utterly ruined by the dread of the halfpenny stamp.
A new spirit had come over it when Thomas Gent
first became a slave to a hard task-master. The lad
was of good abilities, had received a decent education,
and it is not to be supposed tha.t he could shut his
ears to what the compositors and the hawkers talked
about — that there had been published a penny paper
twice a week, called * The Tatler,' which was written
by some of the cleverest men in the kingdom, but
was not above the level of the capacity of a printer'

CHAP. IV. THOMAS GENT. 79

apprentice. A successor to that famous half-sheet
was then being published daily, which all the world
was reading. 'The Spectator' had totally eclipsed
' The British Apollo ' and ' The Observator,' and made
the coffee-house politicians care less for ' The Flying
Post' and 'The Post Boy/

The war was coming to an end : troops were dis-
charged. In ' The Tatler ' of May 20, 1709, Addison
wrote his first paper, so charming in its delicate
humour and so truthfully describing the leading news-
papers of the time, that I may be permitted to tran-
scribe part of it. There are not many readers now,
I fear, of the old essayists : — " There is another sort of
gentlemen whom I am much more concerned for, and
that is the ingenious fraternity of which I have the
honour to be an unworthy member: I mean the
news-writers of Great Britain, whether Post-men or
Post-boys, or by what other name or title soever dig-
nified or distinguished. The case of these gentlemen
is, I think, more hard than that of the soldiers, con-
sidering that they have taken more towns and fought
more battles. They have been upon parties and
skirmishes, when our armies have lain still; and
given the general assault to many a place, when the
besiegers were quiet in their trenches. They have
made us masters of several strong towns many weeks
before our generals could do it ; and completed vic-
tories when our greatest captains have been glad to
come off with a drawn battle. Where Prince Eugene
has slain his thousands, Boyer has slain his ten thou-
sands. This gentleman can, indeed, be never enough
commended for his courage and intrepidity during
this whole war : he has laid about him with an inex-

80 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. IV.

pressible fury, and, like the offended Marius of ancient
Rome, made such havoc among his countrymen as
must be the work of "two or three ages to repair. It
must be confessed the redoubted Mr. Buckley has
shed as much blood as the former; but I cannot
forbear saying (and I hope it will not look like envy)
that we regard our brother Buckley as a kind of
Drawcansir, who spares neither friend nor foe, but
generally kills as many of his own side as the enemy's.
It is impossible for this ingenious sort of men to sub-
sist after a peace. Every one remembers the shifts
they were driven to in the reign of King Charles II.,
when they could not furnish out a single paper of
news without lighting up a comet in Germany, or a
fire in Moscow. There scarce appeared a letter
without a paragraph on an earthquake. Prodigies
were grown so familiar that they had lost their
name, as a great poet of that age has it. I remember
Mr. Dyer, who is justly looked upon by all the fox-
hunters in the nation as the greatest statesman our
country has produced, was particularly famous for
dealing in whales, insomuch that in five months' time
(for I had the curiosity to examine his letters on
that occasion) he brought three into the mouth of
the Eiver Thames, besides two porpoises and a stur-
geon. The judicious and wary Mr. Ichabod Dawks
hath all along been the rival of this great writer,
and got himself a reputation from plagues and
famines; by which, in those days, he destroyed as
great multitudes as he has lately done by the sword.
In every dearth of news Grand Cairo was sure to
be unpeopled."

With all his hard work, Gent could get a peep at

CHAP. IV. THOMAS GENT. 81

some of these vehicles of popular instruction and
entertainment, and might learn better to qualify
himself for something higher than the lot of a
printer's apprentice, who was half-starved, and some-
times beaten. When the dreaded halfpenny duty
was imposed on the 12th of August, 1712, Swift
wrote to Stella, " Do you know that Grub-street is
dead and gone last week ? No more ghosts or mur-
ders now for love or money. I plied it close the last
fortnight, and published at least seven papers of my
own, besides some of other people's." But Grub-
street was not even then " dead and gone :" there
was still abundant work for "the hawkers." The
Tories had driven the Whigs from power, and in
spite of the pillory and the gallows with which Bo-
liugbroke threatened obscure scribblers, and which
modes of keeping things quiet Swift advocated, the
war of pamphlets was furiously carried on. It mat-
tered little to many printers and publishers what side
they took ; and so probably the young Irishman, who
was serving out his apprenticeship with Mr. Mid-
winter, was as indifferent to party considerations as
his master. He was about twenty years of age when
lie says of the tyrant, "I was severely beaten for
sending him a letter to Islington, complaining I was
in a poor philosopher's condition, for want of a pair
of breeches." But this jackal of hawkers began to
find out the youth's value : " Upon my writing Dr.
Sacheverel's sermon after his suspension, for which
I waited from morning to evening to hear him, he
gave me what I wanted, and a crown piece besides,
because he took near thirty pounds that week by it"

G

82 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. IV.

But Midwinter parted with Gent in a friendly manner,
as he was not more full of business than his regular
hands could do. The youth soon got employ, and
continued at work so briskly that by Saturday night
he had earned seventeen shillings. He was, how-
ever, fond of novelty, and went to work at another
place, from which he was discharged as a foreigner
in about three weeks. He was not a freeman of Lon-
don ; so he got no regular employment, but laboured
here and there without settlement, upon what was
called " smouting work." By this he obtained a
tolerable subsistence. But through the recommenda-
tion of a hawker, he formed an engagement with Mr.
White, of York, who " wanted a young man at the
business." This old gentleman was King's printer
for York and five counties, which preferment he had
obtained by printing the Declaration of the Prince of
Orange, when all the printers of London had refused
to undertake so dangerous a piece of work. Mr.
White, Gent says, had plenty of business, there being
few printers except in London at that time — " none
then, I am sure, at Chester, Liverpool, Whitehaven,
Preston, Manchester, Kendal, and Leeds."

When Gent arrived at Mr. White's door at York,
he records " it was opened by the head-maiden, that
is now my dear spouse." Southey has detailed the
course of the true love which the young printer
felt for Mistress Alice Guy, "upper maiden to Mrs.
White." Prudential considerations long prevented
him from completing the engagement with "his
dear at York." After some years the over-cautious
lover found that the lady had married. He consoled

CHAP. IV. THOMAS GENT. 83

himself, when he heard this sad news in London,
by writing a copy of verses, entitled * The Forsaken
Lover's Letter to his former Sweetheart," which
production he gave to Mr. Dodd, a ballad printer,
who " sold thousands of them, for which he offered
me a price ; but, as it was on my own proper concern,
I scorned to accept of anything except a glass of
comfort or so." Other amorous poets have not been
quite so disinterested, nor have they exercised so
much reticence about their "own proper concern."
When he heard, in 1724, that the quondam Alice
Guy had become a widow, he started at once in the
stage-coach from the Black Swan in Holborn, which
took him to York in four days' time. "Here I
found my dearest once more, though much altered
to what she was about ten years before, that I had
not seen her : there was no need for new courtship ;
but decency suspended the ceremony of marriage for
some time."

Having thus happily disposed of the domestic
affairs of Thomas Gent, I return to his first interview
with old Mr. White, who was at his dinner by the fire-
side, sitting in a noble arm-chair, with a good large
fire before him. " I had a guinea in my shoe-lining,
which I pulled out to ease my foot, at which the old
gentleman smiled, and pleasantly said it was more
than he had ever seen a journeyman save before."
This was pretty much the case when the writer
of these Shadows first knew something of the habit
of printers in his father's office. There was one excep-
tion. A compositor who worked for him at Windsor
for many years was proud to show a guinea, which

G 2

84 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. IV.

he said he had always kept in his pocket to unscrew
his composing-stick. Gent appears to have boarded
in the family of Mr. White, in which he lived as
happy as he could wish until the year was at an end
for which he had been hired. An irrepressible desire
then came over him to visit his friends in Ireland.
Young ladies of the middle rank were even then
novel-readers, although they had no light reading
but the cumbrous folios or interminable duodecimos
translated from the French of M. de la Calprenede
and Mademoiselle Scudery. There were as yet no
Defoes, or Eichardsons, or Fieldings. So Thomas
Gent, in describing his pleasant intercourse with his
" dear niece Anne Standish, a perfect beauty," says,
" Often did we walk till late hours in the garden ;
she could tell me almost every passage in ' Cassandra,'
a celebrated romance that I had bought for her at
London." There was a choice of the works of
Calprenede, whose ' Pharamond,' ' Cassandra,' and
' Cleopatra ' rivalled the great heroic romances of
Scudery, in which Greeks and Romans talked the
language of the Court of Louis Quatorze. Gent's
pleasant hours in Dublin — where he had obtained
work with one who printed many good books — were
cut short by " a sad persecution from my old master
Powell, who employed officers to seize me for leaving
my apprenticeship with him." He rejoices that he
had a good kingdom to return to, and determined to
leave Ireland privately. There is again a break in
his narrative; but, in 1716, we find him again in the
employ of his old master, Midwinter. In 1717 he
became, as he said, absolutely free both in England

CHAP. IV. THOMAS GENT. 85

and Ireland, for he was made a freeman of the
Company of Stationers, and on the 9th of October
"commenced citizen of London. We dined at a
tavern that day, and my part of the treat, with other
expenses, came to about 3L" Soon after, his old
Dublin master freed him from all obligation by
accepting 51. for his discharge.

When Thomas Gent became "a citizen," he
naturally thought he ought to make better terms
for his services than when he stood in the doubtful
position of a runaway apprentice. Midwinter was of
a different opinion, and they parted. He was soon
constrained "to labour at the press, with jobs done
at various houses, since work at case was not so
brisk but what there were enough of hands to per-
form it." His strength was then put to the utmost
stretch, till he applied to the cautious and ingenious
Mr. Wilkins, in Little Britain. " On his asking with
whom and where I served my time, he thought, as it
was a ballad house, that I must in consequence be
insufficient for his polite business." Mr. Wilkins was
the favourite printer of the Whig party, and from his
office, about this period, five different newspapers
were issued, one of which, ' The Whitehall Evening
Post,' defied the almost inevitable decay of a century's
growth. Here he was working alternately at press
and case; but the great fatigue of the press made
him seek for employ " more suitable to my genius
and constitution," desiring also to be quit of a ma-
lignant fellow-workman, who afterwards obtained a
disgraceful notoriety, which subsequently may be
worth a passing notice! In the office of Mr. Watts,

86 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. IV.

the partner of Jacob Tonson, our young Irishman
found employment not unworthy of a compositor
who had a tincture of learning. "The fame of
Mr. John Watts for excellently good printing will
endure as long as any public library shall exist."
This is the testimony of an experienced judge, Mr.
John Nichols. In that famous office, a few years
later, was working another youth, whose earlier fame
as a great discoverer in science was excelled by
the boldness and wisdom of his statesmanship in
the great revolt which gave freedom to the American
colonies. When Thomas Gent, the printer of York,
died in 1778, and was soon forgotten by the world,
Benjamin Franklin was at the height of his influence
upon the destinies of nations. Some part of the
education of the great printer of Philadelphia be-
longs to London. Let me turn aside from smaller
men to look at him, a youth of nineteen, when he
lodged in Little Britain, and made an acquaintance
with Wilcot, a bookseller there, who had an immense
collection of second-hand books, which were lent to
him upon reasonable terms, " circulating libraries
not being then in use." The American lad works
for a year at Palmer's, " a famous printing-house in
Bartholomew Close." But the picture he has drawn
of himself, as he worked in the office of Mr. Watts,
in Lincoln's Inn Fields, will bear no abridgment at
my hands. " Here," he records in his Autobiography,
" I continued all the rest of my stay in London. At
my first admission into a printing-house I took to
working at press, imagining I felt a want of the
bodily exercise I had been used to in America, where

CHAP. IV. THOMAS GEXT. 87

presswork is mixed with the composing. I drank
only water ; the other workmen, near fifty in number,
were great drinkers of beer. On occasion, I carried
up and down stairs a large form of types in each
hand, when others carried but one in both hands.
They wondered to see, from this and similar in-
stances, that the Water American, as they called me,
was stronger than themselves who drank strong beer !
We had an alehouse boy, who attended always in
the house to supply the workmen. My companion
at the press drank every day a pint before breakfast,
a pint at breakfast with his bread and cheese, a
pint between breakfast and dinner, a pint at dinner,
a pint in the afternoon about six o'clock, and another
when he had done his day's work. I thought it a

detestable custom Watts, after some weeks,

desiring to have me in the composing-room, I left

the pressmen From my example, a great

many of them left their muddling breakfast of beer,
bread, and cheese, finding they could be supplied
from a neighbouring house with a large porringer of
hot water-gruel, sprinkled with pepper, crumbled with
bread, and a bit of butter in it, for the price of a

pint of beer, viz. three halfpence My constant

attendance (I never making a St. Monday) recom-
mended me to the master ; and my uncommon quick-
ness at composing occasioned my being put upon
work of despatch, which was generally better paid.
So I went on now very agreeably." It is possible to
imagine the shadow of Jacob Tonson walking round
the printing-office with his partner, and having heard
the story of the young man from Boston, who drank

88 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. IV.

no beer, never made a St. Monday, and was wonder-
fully quick at composing, looking at him with some-
thing of admiration, and prophesying that he would
make a figure in the world.

Thomas Gent lost his situation with the liberal
and intelligent partner of Tonson by an act of im-
prudence, if not of covetousness. There was a press
recently set up near Mr. Watts's office, where a
newspaper was printed. The proprietor was Mr.
Francis Clifton, "who had a liberal education at
Oxford, but proved a Koman Catholic." He being
in great distress for a hand, Gent ventured to assist
him for a day or two. " This, being discovered, was
very ill interpreted." Mr. Clifton offered him large
wages, though himself in poor circumstances ; so
the unstable youth resolved to mix himself up with
the doubtful fortunes of the Roman Catholic printer.
This somewhat dangerous connexion, at a period of
Jacobite plots and political ferments, opens some
curious views of the printing and publishing of those
times. Clifton, apprehensive that an estreat might
be issued against him, moved his goods into the
Liberty of the Fleet, and there became entered as a
prisoner. "The Catholics often relieved him, and
he was equally as ready to oblige them in his pub-
lications." Gent was paid honestly almost every
week; but what a change from the comfortable
office of Mr. Watts, in Lincoln's Inn Fields. " Some-
time, in extreme weather, have I worked under a
mean shed adjoining to the prison wall, when snow
and rain have* fallen alternately on the cases ; yet
the number of wide-mouthed stentorian hawkers,

CHAP. IV. THOMAS GENT. 89

brisk trade, and very often a glass of good ale, re-
vived the drooping spirits of me and other work-
men." Clifton had printed a pamphlet vindicating
the character of a clergyman who had been com-
mitted to the King's Bench on an action of scandalum
magnatum. Gent composed the letters and helped
to Avork off the matter at press, but was not per-
mitted to know the name of the author. Let me
call up the shadows of a scene new to history.
Clifton and his journeymen, with their work com-
pleted, are in the spacious hall of a large sort of
monastic building. They sit near a large table
covered with an ancient carpet of curious work, on
which a bottle of wine is soon placed for their
entertainment. A grave gentleman, in a black lay
habit, enters, who discourses pleasantly on many
subjects. But this agreeable talk is closed with a
serious injunction. They are bidden to be secret.
" You need not fear me, sir," said Clifton. The wine
has got into Gent's head, and he is more diffuse in
his assurances : " And I, good sir, you may be less
afraid of; for I protest I do not know where I am,
much less your person ; nor heard where I should be
driven, or if I shall not be drove to Jerusalem before
I get home again. I drink to your health, sir, in this
brimful glass." That monastic building was in Dean's
Yard, Westminster; the spacious hall was in the
Deanery; the Bishop of Kochester was Dean of
Westminster; and when, in 1723, Gent saw Dr.
Atterbury a state prisoner in a coach, guarded from
Westminster to the Tower, he knew to whose health
he had drunk when he had got " merrily tipsy " in

90 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. IV.

1719. He thanked God that his master and he had
done nothing of offence at that time on any political
account, — " a thing that produces such direful con-
sequences." He might well be thankful ; for he
soon after witnessed a young printer, John Matthews,
drawn upon a sledge, having been found guilty of
high treason, for printing a work called ' Vox Populi
vox Dei.' The principal evidence against him was
John Vesey, a journeyman, who did not long survive
the youth. "At his burial, in an obscure part of
Islington churchyard, many of the printers' boys
who run of errands, called Devils, made a noise like
such with their ball-stocks, carried thither for that
purpose. The minister was much interrupted during
the burial service, and shameful indignities were
committed at the grave." Printers who had been at
Islington that day got into trouble with the Courts
at Westminster.

Gent had saved money, and was disposed to invest
it in printing materials, with a view to settling in the
country. At the recommendation of a friend who
printed the Bellman's verses at Christmas — for
which sometimes he had the honour of being the
poet — he purchased some founts of letter from
Mr. Mist which were designed for the furnace. He
bought also some new founts and a little press, with
which he says, " I did now and then a job of my
own," though he continued as a journeyman with
Mr. Midwinter. The master and his men coming
under the suspicion of the Government, were each
arrested by a King's messenger. Gent had been
accused of having written some lines concerning

CHAP. IV. THOMAS GEXT. 91

the imprisoned Bishop of Eochester that had given
offence. When his master was brought in a prisoner,
the author-compositor appealed to him in terms
which tell us how little bookselling and printing
operations in other matters than those of Church and
State had been improved since the time of John
Dunton. "What, sir, have they made me appear
greater than you, by placing me first in the warrant
for our apprehension ? — me, who am but your ser-
vant, and, you know, have wrote nothing for you this
long time, except an abridgment of three volumes
of 'Crusoe' into one!" The charge of sedition
against Gent and his master was soon dismissed.
The dishonest abridgment of ' Crusoe ' is not so
easily disposed of.

On the 23rd of April, 1719, there was entered at
Stationers' Hall, by William Taylor, a book which
was published in the same month, in one octavo
volume. It was entitled, ' The Life and Strange
Surprising Adventures of Eobinson Crusoe, of York,
Mariner, who lived eight-and-twenty years all alone
in an uninhabited Island on the Coast of America,
near the Mouth of the Great River Oroonoque,
having been cast on shore by Shipwreck, wherein all
the men perished but himself ; with an Account
how he Avas at last strangely delivered by Pirates.
Written by himself.' It is recorded that the manu-
script of ' Robinson Crusoe ' passed through the
whole trade before it could find a purchaser. The
fortunate purchaser, William Taylor, who carried on
his business at the Ship, in Paternoster-row, sold four
editions in as many months. In the following August

92 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. IV.

appeared another volume, entitled, 'The further
Adventures of Eobiuson Crusoe : being the Second
and Last Part of his Life.' This was also published
by William Taylor. It appears from the preface
that the abridgers had already been at work upon
the first part. Their labour is denounced by Defoe
as knavish and ridiculous, " seeing, while to shorten
the book, that they may seem to reduce the value,
they strip it of all those reflections, as well religious
as moral, which are not only the greatest beauties of
the work, but are calculated for the infinite advantage
of the reader." In the ' St. James's Post ' for August
the 7th, 1719, an advertisement declares that "the
pretended abridgment of ' Eobinson Crusoe,' clandes-
tinely printed for T. Cox, consists only of some
scattered passages incoherently tacked together."
The vendors were threatened with prosecution accord-
ing to law. Cox vindicated himself from any concern
in the piracy. But this abridgment was not the
work of Thomas Gent. In 1722 there was a third
volume published, entitled ' Serious Reflections during
the Life, and surprising Adventures, of Eobinson
Crusoe, with his Vision of the Angelic World.
Written by himself.' "An abridgment of three
volumes of Crusoe into one," was the literary task
which Gent performed for Midwinter, and which he
records without much compunction. Defoe was
nearly sixty years of age when ' Eobinson Crusoe '
was published. He had discovered the class of sub-
jects best suited to his wonderful power of making
fiction look like reality. From 1720 to 1725, he
every year produced a new work, of which it is truly

CHAP. IV. THOMAS GENT. 93

said, " The art of natural story-telling which can
discard every resort to mere writing or reflection,
and rest solely on what people, in peculiar situations,
say and do, just as if there were no reader to hear all
about it, has had no such astonishing illustrations."*
The great novelist considered that " to shorten "
was an easy task to the pirate, who had only to
omit the moral and religious reflections. But these
coarse pruners, with hatchet in hand to lop and hew.
were equally ready to omit those minute details,
which give to Defoe's romances the charm of veri-
similitude. Had they dealt in this way with the
' History of the Plague,' they would have abridged
all those wonderful touches which made a great
physician quote the book as the narrative of an eye-
witness. The ' Life and Adventures of Colonel Jack'
might have been suffered to retain those descriptions
which have given it a place amongst the true lives
of highwaymen ; but the early scenes in which we
see the London vagabond sleeping on the ashes of
the glass-houses might have been thrown aside for
the hero who was to stop a coach with " Stand and
Deliver." It has been truly said that Richardson
founded his style of minute narrative wholly upon
Defoe.

In his London career as a printer of " Grub-street "
pamphlets, Thomas Gent seems to have exercised
the happy faculty of combining profit with safety.
Having set up his press and types in a light room
that was adjoining to the garden of the Fleet prison,

* 'Historical and Biographical Essays.' John Forster,
vol. ii. p. 96.

94 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. IV.

" where the gentlemen prisoners took their diversion,"
he had to exercise no common ingenuity in the pro-
ductions of his ready pen. " Here I published, truly,
some things relating to the Bishop, worked by hired
servants, that made some amends for what I had
suffered through wrong information on his account;
and whilst I pleased the people by an artful taking
title, I strove to instil into them the principles of
loyalty, love, and obedience." Sometimes he could
find business enough to employ him in printing on
his own account. " I printed a collection of songs
proper for the summer's entertainment ; a little book
of emblems ; and a ' Preparation for Death,' kept me
at work for some months after, with bills for the
Cockpits, which were done twice a week." Nothing
came amiss. "But business failing, and journey-
work being brisk in great houses, I applied to
Mr. Henry Woodfall, who readily accepted me, and
I helped to finish the part that he had of a learned
Dictionary." It is pleasant to meet thus early with
the name of Woodfall. This kind employer of Gent
carried on his business Without Temple Bar. He
was working as a journeyman to one of Pope's printers,
when the great poet, who was kind to most persons
except to poor authors, recognised his abilities and
knowledge, and helped him to go into business for
himself, as he did Kobert Dodsley. Did Pope ever
hear Henry Woodfall sing that famous ballad of
'Darby and Joan,' which he made when he was
apprenticed to Mr. Darby, of whom Dunton says, " He
goes to Heaven with the Anabaptists " — whose wife
is " chaste as a picture cut in alabaster — Sir Roger

CHAP. IV. THOMAS GENT. 95

L'Estrange, on his bended knees, could not prevail
for so much as a wanton look?" Wicked Henry
Woodfall ! Did you ever dare to chaunt this ditty
at a weigh-goose ? Mr. Henry Woodfall ! — recorded
as " known to be well affected to King George."
How that name, the first of a family eminent as
printers during nearly a century, calls up the recol-
lections of political contests, when Jacobitism was
quietly inurned, and the Court of St. Germain's
was no longer a terror to the Court of St. James's.
In the times when Atterbury was banished, Thomas
Gent seems perpetually amongst the other " scum
uppermost," when the political cauldron is boiling
over. When Christopher Layer, a barrister, suffered
capital punishment in 1733, our printer did his
literary work like a great artist. " I continued," he
says, " working for Mr. WToodfall until the execution
of Counsellor Layer, on whose few dying words
I formed observations in nature of a large speech,
and had a run of sale for about three days succes-
sively, which obliged me to keep in my own apart-
ments, the unruly hawkers being ready to pull my
press in pieces for the goods." In Nichols's * Literary
Anecdotes,' there is a curious list of all the Printing
Houses in London and Westminster, and in several
Corporation towns, most humbly laid before the
Eight Hon. Lord Viscount Townshend, Secretary of
State. This was originally printed by Oldys, the
antiquarian. Samuel Negus, the compiler of this list,
was the " malignant fellow-workman " who tormented
Gent when they were in the employ of Mr. Wilkins.
This list classes the printers of 1720 as those " Known

96 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. IV.

to be well affected to King George ; " as " Non-
jurors ; " and as " Said to be High Flyers." Amongst
the latter is " Gent, Pye Corner." A fourth classi-
fication is that of " Eoman Catholics." A conversa-
tion which Gent had on this subject with Mr. Woodfall
is worthy a transcript, as an anecdote which exhibits
the Printers and the Government in an honourable
attitude. With this characteristic feature of the days
when printing was not so safe an operation as in the
reign of Queen Victoria, I close my shadowy view of
the career of Gent in London.

" After the hurry was over," writes Gent, " I
returned to my master, and continuing some time,
he one morning told me that the night before, being
in the club of master printers of the higher class, he
laughed heartily upon my account. ' Pray, why so,
sir ! ' said I ; ' how came I to be the theme ? ' ' Why,'
said he, 'has not that fellow, Sam Negus, put you
amongst the catalogue of masters, and placed you in
Pye Corner ? ' ' It's like his blunders/ said I ; ' but
how came he to print such a catalogue ? ' ' Why,'
replied he, 'the creature, who is now set up as a
master himself, is not satisfied, but wants to be
messenger of the press ; so that he has exhibited
what printing-houses there are in England to the
Secretary of State, to show his readiness to visit
them, provided he is furnished with authority and
profit ; he has mentioned who he th ought were of
high or low principles, but is sadly mistaken, for lie
has called whigs tories, and tories whigs, as wretched
in calculations as Sir John Wronghead in his vote ;
and I'll assure you, Mr. Gent, that you're amongst

CHAP. IV. THOMAS GENT. 97

the tories.' ' 'Tis through such a rascal as him,'
answered I, ' that I was made a state prisoner ; but
has he obtained his ends ?' 'No,' said Mr. Woodfall ;
'the Secretary, laughing at the list, bantered Mr.
Watts with what a hopeful company there was of the
profession, and gave him a copy, which, being brought
into Wild-court, the men joyfully put it to the press,
and dispersed the paltry petition, too much honoured
by the names of creditable persons he had traduced,
throughout the members of the profession, that so
the vile wretch might be justly exposed.' ' He well
deserved it,' thought I, and so dropt him."

Gent was sometimes working his own press, and
sometimes employed as a journeyman. He had been
working for " the ingenious Mr. Richardson, in
Salisbury Court," and also as manager of a printing
business carried on by a "gentlewoman," when a
quondam partner at Mr. Midwinter's came to his
chambers and said, " Tommy, all these fine materials
of yours must be moved to York, and you must go
too, for your first sweetheart is now at liberty, and
left in good circumstances by her dear spouse, who
deceased but of late." Tommy, having expressed his
opinion that he might not trifle with a widow as he
had formerly done with a maid, packed up his goods,
and started for York. The happy result of this
journey I have already mentioned. Gent never left
York after 1724. His " web of life " there was " of
a chequered yarn." He was unsuccessful in the
publication of a newspaper. He acquired money and
reputation by three topographical works which he
wrote and printed — the ' Famous History of the City

H

98 SHADOWS OP THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. IV.

of York ; ' the ' History of the Loyal Town of
Bipon,' &c. ; and the ' History of the Royal and
Beautiful Town of Kingston-upon-Hull.' He died at
his house at York, in his 87th year, in poor circum-
stances. A portrait of him in his old age was painted
by one of the Drakes, of York, and was exhibited for
his profit. Of this there is a fine mezzotinto en-
graving by Valentine Green. A play, also, was twice
performed for his benefit. His Shop-bill, in 1743, is
a curious specimen of the sober, almost lofty style, in
which the better educated of those who followed the
liberal calling of printer and bookseller were wont to
address their claims for the patronage of scholars
and gentlemen, with some approach to a footing of
equality.

CHAP. IV. THOMAS GENT. 99

THOMAS GENT,

^ETAT. 50,
LAUS DEO :

A PERSON descended from the Gents in Staffordshire, freeman of
London, York, and two other remarkable cities, lawful printer
and stationer ; a lover of these English northern parts, in which,
as a right master, he has brought up several reputable servants ;
and, under God's divine providence, hitherto protected his family,
to the comfort also of some needy, but honest deserving people.
Within his new well- contrived office, abovesaid, printing work is
performed in a curious and judicious manner, having sets of fine
characters for the Greek, Latin, English, Mathematics, &c. He
sells the Histories of Home, France, England, particularly of this
ancient City, Aynsty, and extensive County, in five volumes ;
likewise a book of the holy life of St. Winifred, and her wonder-
ful Cambrian fountain. He has stimulated an ingenious founder
to cast such musical types, for the common press, as never yet
were exhibited ; and has prepared a new edition for his York
History against the time when the few remaining of that first
and large impression are disposed of, wherein will appear several
remarkable occurrences and amendments, if it pleases the Divine
Majesty to grant him life at the publication thereof.

Psallite Domino, in cithara", in cithara et voce Psalmi ; in
tubis ductilibus, et voce tubse corneas.

Ipsi vero in vanum qua3sierunt animam meam, introibunt
in inferiora teroe ; tradentur in manus gladii ; partes vulpium
erunt.

H 2

100 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. V.

CHAPTEK V.

THE TONSONS; LINTOTTS; CURLL.

HEEE has been a dinner at " young Jacob
Tonson's" — a literary dinner at which
Swift, and Steele, and Addison, were of
the company. The nephew of old Jacob
had become his partner. This dinner was on the
26th of July, 1711. The Tories had come into
power. Swift had deserted his former political friends ;
and so had Prior, who was in consequence expelled
from the Kit-cat Club. The distinguished guests are
departed, and the nephew and the uncle are left
alone to talk over the occurrences of the evening. It
had not been altogether a pleasant evening, for Addi-
son and Swift were not cordial; and Steele, good-
tempered as he was at all times, and especially so
over his wine, was more than usually careful in his
talk. " Well ! I think you gave that puffed-up Vicar
of Laracor a piece' of your mind when you charged
him with trying to make the Secretary take from us
the printing of ' The Gazette.' " " But he denied it,"
replied old Jacob. " True ! But he writes foul libels,
and therefore might not stick at a falsehood." " No,
no, he is too proud to speak a lie, especially when
there is a chance of being found out." " I firmly
believe that it was he," said young Jacob, " who got

CHAP. V. THE TONSONS ; LINTOTTS ; CURLL. 101

Steele turned out of his office of ' Gazette ' writer."
" It is a great shame," said the uncle, " ' The Gazette '
is just that one little place which an honest govern-
ment would give to a deserving man of letters,
without regard to party; or at any rate would not
turn out the holder of it when he had done nothing
offensive in his office. Poor Dick was very careful. I
have heard him say that the Gazetteer was the lowest
minister of state ; and that he never erred against the
rules observed by all ministries to keep ' The Gazette '
very innocent and very insipid." "It will become
a post for the lowest Grub-street Judas, or the vul-
garest hanger-on of an Irish viceroy," quoth young
Jacob.*

The Tonsons did not give themselves up to fruitless
lamentations when they lost the printing of ' The
Gazette.' Naturally they did not abate their sus-
picions of the management of Swift in these petty
things of party. He was well known to be stirring
heaven and earth to procure John Barber some lucra-
tive appointments, in connexion with a brother sta-
tioner. Barber and his lucky friend appear to have
been insatiable in their demands upon the Tory
government. In the ' Journal to Stella ' he describes

* " Mr. Addison and I have at last met again. I dined with
him and Steele to-day at young Jacob Ton son's. The two Jacobs
think it is I who have made the secretary take from them the
printing of the ' Gazette,' which they, are going to lose, and Ben
Tooke and another are to have it. Jacob came to me t'other day
to make his court ; but I told him it was too late, and that it was
not my doing. I reckon they will lose it in a week or two." —
' Swift's Journal to Stella,' July 26th, 1711.

102 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. V.

these exertions. He had obtained for them the ap-
pointment of Stationers to the Ordnance — the third
employment he had got for them. When they still
want something more, the great humourist, who can
be kind enough to the most unblushing partisan,
writes (January 16, 1711-12) : — " My printer and
bookseller want me to hook in another employment
for them in the Tower, because it was enjoyed before
by a stationer, although it be to serve the Ordnance
with oil, tallow, &c., and is worth four hundred pounds
per annum more. I will try what I can do. They
are resolved to ask several other employments of the
same nature to other offices ; and / will then grease
fat sows, and see whether it be possible to satisfy
them. Why am not I a stationer ? " In a letter,
written at the time when the successful printer had
reached the highest civic dignity (being the only one
of that trade who became Lord Mayor of London),
Swift says, " Alderman Barber was my old acquaint-
ance ; I got him two or three employments when I
had credit with the Queen's ministers." The alder-
man was not only one of the most violent of Tories,
but a Jacobite. Travelling in Italy, he was introduced
to the Pretender, and was arrested on his return home.
His memory is preserved by the ostentatious inscrip-
tion which he placed upon the monument of Butler,
erected in Westminster Abbey at his expense. There
was another patron of genius who, in the same manner,
desired to link his fame to that of Milton. An
epigram, ascribed to Pope, which he proposed to be
placed on the blank scroll under Shakspere's bust,

CHAP. V. THE TONSONS ; LINTOTTS ; CURLL. 103

has not yet been efficient in warning off trespassers
upon this hallowed ground : —

" Thus Britain lov'd me, and preserv'd my fame,
Safe from a Barber's or a Benson's name."

The elder Jacob, in 1706, had made his advances
to Pope in a plain tradesman-like fashion, which the
great publishers of later times may probably deem too
humble. He had been shown the manuscript of a
Pastoral, which he thought " extremely fine," and he
thus concludes his brief note of solicitation : " I re-
member I have formerly seen you in my shop, and
am sorry I did not improve my acquaintance with
you. If you design your poem for the press, no one
shall be more careful in printing it, nor no one can
give greater encouragement to it ^than, Sir, &c."
Pope's Pastorals were published in ' Tonson's Mis-
cellany' in 1709. The young poet, however, was not
constant ; and he committed the ' Essay on Criticism'
— published at first anonymously — to a bookseller of
no great celebrity, of the name of Lewis. Its sale
was at first slow. It was attacked by Dennis and
praised by Addison. Tonson had to bear a more
marked desertion by Pope than the choice of a new
publisher for the Essay. Bernard Lintott had set up
a Miscellany which was to be a rival to Tonson's, and
here, in 1712, appeared the first sketch of the ' Eape
of the Lock.' As the success of Tonson had been
founded upon Dryden, so that of Lintott was estab-
lished by his connexion with Pope. Yet Tonson
and Pope were not upon unfriendly terms. Spence
has recorded several anecdotes, in which they are

104 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. V.

introduced as conversing as intimate acquaintances
only converse. For example : " Ay, Mr. Tonson, he
was ultimus Roma/riorum (with a sigh) — speaking of
poor Mr. Congreve, who died a year or two before."

The Bernard Lintott, whom Pope has made famous,
was a bookseller, described in his quaint style by
John Dunton: "He lately published 'A Collection
of Tragic Tales, &c.,' by which I perceive he is angry
with the world, and scorns it into the bargain ; and I
cannot blame him ; for Durfey (his author) both treats
and esteems it as it deserves — too hard a task for
those whom it flatters, or perhaps for Bernard himself,
should the world ever change its humour and grin
upon him." Mr. Durfey's comic songs were probably
more profitable to the bookseller than his tragic tales.
Of Durfey's reputation amongst country squires there
is a capital description by Pope, in a letter written in
1710 to his town friend Cromwell : " I assure you I
am looked upon in the neighbourhood for a very sober,
well-disposed person ; no great hunter, indeed, but a
great esteemer of the noble sport, and only unhappy
in my want of constitution for that and drinking.
They all say 'tis pity I am so sickly, and I think 'tis
pity they are so healthy. But I say nothing that may
destroy their good opinion of me. I have not quoted
one Latin author since I came down, but have learned
without book a song of Mr. Thomas Durfey's, who is
your only poet of tolerable reputation in this country.
He makes all the merriment in our entertainments,
and, but for him, there would be so miserable a dearth
of catches, that I fear they would (sans cerdmonie) put
either the parson or me upon making some for 'em.

CHAP. V. THE TOXSOXS; LIXTOTTS ; CUELL. 105

Any man, of any quality, is heartily welcome to the
best toping-table of our gentry, who can roundly hum
out some fragments or rhapsodies of his works; so
that in the same manner as it was said of Homer to
his detractors, ' What ! dares any man speak against
him who has given so many men to eat ? ' (meaning
the rhapsodists who lived by repeating his verses,)
so may it be said of Mr. Durfey to his detractors,
' Dares any one despise him who has made so many
men drink ? ' "

Of the course of the negotiations between Pope and
Liiitott for the publication of the translation of Homer's
' Iliad ' there is no distinct record. The terms of the
contract are as well known as any fact in the history
of letters. Of these terms, which made Pope inde-
pendent, I may presently say a few words, as illus-
trative of the publishing risks of a century and a half
ago. Meanwhile let me look at the shadow of the
bookseller, as it was sketched by the poet in a letter
of 1715. In ' The Postboy ' of June 4 of that year,
it was announced that the first volume of Mr. Pope's
translation will be ready to be delivered to the sub-
scribers on Monday next, " by Bernard Lintott, book-
seller, at the Cross Keys between the Temple Gates
in Fleet-street, where the several pieces Mr. Pope
has published may be had."

The celebrated letter of Pope to the Earl of Bur-
lington, of which Lintott is the subject, has been so
repeatedly printed that I cannot venture to reprint it.
It is assigned by Mr. Thackeray to August, 1714. Mr.
Carruthers, in his excellent ' Life of Pope,' mentions
the journey to Oxford as occurring " shortly after the

106 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. V.

delivery of the first volume " of the Homer. Upon
the face of the letter this would appear to be correct,
although Mr. Nichols, in his 'Literary Anecdotes'
(vol. viii. p. 170), calls it an "undated letter," and
ascribes it to 1725, when the publication of the Homer
was concluded. The letter, however, could not have
been " evidently intended for publication," as Mr.
Carruthers infers. When the reputation of the book-
seller was so closely associated with that of the author,
it is not likely that Pope's exquisite vein of satire
would be publicly discharged upon Lintott. When
he figured in ' The Dunciad ' their relations were
very different.

Mr. Pope is on his way to Oxford. His journey is
made on horseback. He was of delicate frame, but
of active habits — " a lively little creature," as he has
described himself in a paper in ' The Guardian,' " with
long arms and legs." His deformity was a perpetual
topic of ridicule by his enemies, and it was bitterly
said of him by an insincere friend " that he had a
crooked mind in a crooked body." " The enter-
prising Mr. Lintott, the redoubtable rival of Mr. Ton-
son," overtakes him in Windsor forest. He had heard
that Mr. Pope was going to Oxford, and would, as
his bookseller, accompany him thither. " Where did
you get your horse?" said Mr. Pope. He got it of
" his publisher." * " That rogue my printer disap-
pointed me. I hoped to put him in good humour by
a treat at the tavern of a brown fricassee of rabbits,

* This is not very intelligible, according to our modern use of
the word " publisher," which would make Lintott himself the
" publisher," and not some agent or servant employed by him.

CHAP. V. THE TONSONS ; LINTOTTS ; CURLL. 107

which cost ten shillings, with two quarts of wine,
besides my conversation." They proceeded on the
road, when Mr. Lintott begins to talk in this manner :
" Now, damn them ! What if they should put it into
the newspaper how you and I went together to Oxford?
What would I care ? If I should go down into Sussex
they would say I was gone to the Speaker ; but what
of that ? If my son were big enough to go on with
the business, by G — d, I would keep as good company
as old Jacob." Mr. Pope having observed that the
bookseller sat uneasy on his saddle, Bernard says,
" It is nothing ; I can bear it well enough." But he
had a keen eye for doing business : " Since we have
the day before us, methinks it would be very pleasant
for you to rest awhile under the woods." When they
were alighted he proceeds : " See, here, what a mighty
pretty Horace I have in my pocket. What if you
amused yourself in turning an ode till we mount
again ? Lord ! if you pleased, what a clever miscel-
lany might you make at leisure hours ! " Mr. Pope
thinks he might turn an ode if they rode on. There
is silence for a full hour, when Mr. Lintott stops short
and breaks out — " Well, Sir, how far have you gone ? "
" Seven miles," answers Mr. Pope. Then come some
revelations from the bookseller about his translators.
" Those," said he, " are the saddest pack of rogues in
the world ; in a hungry fit they'll swear they under-
stand all the languages in the universe. I have
known one of them take down a Greek book upon
my counter and cry, ' Ah ! this is Hebrew,' and must
read it from the latter end. By G — d, I can never
be sure of these fellows, for I neither understand

108 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. V.

Greek, Latin, French, nor Italian myself." John
Dunton had made something like the same discovery
before Bernard Lintott : " I always thought their
great concern lay more in how much a sheet, than in
any generous respect they bore to the Commonwealth
of Learning ; and, indeed, the learning itself of these
gentlemen lies very often in as little room as their
honesty ; though they will pretend to have studied
you six or seven years in the Bodleian Library, to
have turned over the Fathers, and to have read and
digested the whole compass both of human and eccle-
siastic history — when, alas! they have never been
able to understand a single page of Saint Cyprian,
and cannot tell you whether the Fathers lived before
or after Christ." But great Bernard's method of
dealing with the critics is as original as it is edifying.
He could silence the rich ones by a sheet of the
blotted manuscript, which cost him nothing : " They
will go about with it to their acquaintance and pre-
tend they had it from the author, who submitted it
to their correction." The poor ones were a little more
costly. A lean man, that looked like a good scholar,
came into his shop, and turning over the Homer, shook
his head, shrugged up his shoulders, and pished at
every line of it. " Mr. Lintott," he said, " I am very
sorry you should be at the expense of this great book ;
I am really concerned on your account." Mrs. Lintott
calls to dinner. The critic is invited to eat a piece of
beef, with a slice of pudding. " ' Mr. Lintott, I do not
say but Mr. Pope, if he would condescend to advise
with men of learning' — 'Sir, the pudding is upon
the table, if you please to go in.' My critic complies ;

CHAP. V. THE TONSONS ; LINTOTTS ; CURLL. 109

he comes to a taste of your poetry, and tells me in
the same breath that the book is commendable and
the pudding excellent."

In the spring which followed the autumnal journey
to Oxford, there commenced the ignoble and deadly
warfare between Alexander Pope and Edmund Curll,
of Fleet-street, bookseller, which amused the town for
years, but which, to the admirers of a great genius, is
painful to look back upon. It is as startling to meet
with anything like a commendation of this notorious
publisher, as to find that the world has been deceived
in its moral estimate of Richard the Third, Henry
the Eighth, or Lord Bacon. Mr. John Nichols thus
writes of the " dauntless," whose name has become a
brief but emphatic mode of characterising any book-
seller whose vocation is altogether disreputable : " The
memory of Edmund Curll has been transmitted to
posterity with an obloquy more severe than he
deserved. Whatever were his demerits in having
occasionally published works that the present age
would very properly consider too licentious, he cer-
tainly deserves commendation for his industry in
preserving our National Remains. And it may per-
haps be added, that he did not publish a single
volume but what, amidst a profusion of base metal,
contained some precious ore, some valuable reliques,
which future collectors could nowhere else have
found." * Browne Willis gave him a sort of certifi-
cate that " he deserves to be encouraged by us all
who are well-wishers to this study " — that of English

* ' Literary Anecdotes,' vol. i. p. 456.

110 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. V.

Antiquities — " no bookseller in town having been so
curious as he." But the satirists have had far more
influence than the antiquaries in presenting posterity
with the shadow of this old bookseller ; and we must
even take his unprepossessing outward man, as de-
scribed by a contemporary who had no personal
motive for damning to everlasting fame, as Pope
had : — " Curll was in person very tall and thin — an
ungainly, awkward, white-faced man. His eyes were
a light grey — large, projecting, goggle, and purblind.
He was splay-footed and baker-kneed." Thus Mr.
Thomas Amory sketches the figure and countenance
of Curll, in his curious and interesting ' John Buncle.'
This book is, in many particulars, autobiographical ;
and as few now-a-days will trouble themselves to read
the narrative of his tea-drinkings with the most beau-
tiful and learned ladies of the Unitarian persuasion,
I will extract his description of the character and
doings of Curll — as true a representation, I may well
believe, as ever was drawn : —

" He had a good natural understanding, and was
well acquainted with more than the title-pages of
books. He talked well on some subjects. He was
not an infidel, as Mrs. Rowe misrepresents him in one
of her letters to Lady Hartford (afterwards Duchess
of Somerset). He told me it was quite evident to
him that the scriptures of the Old and New Testament
contained a real revelation : there is for it a rational,
a natural, a traditionary, and a supernatural testi-
mony, which rendered it quite certain to him. He
said he no more doubted the truth of the Christian

CHAP. V. THE TOXSOXS; LIXTOTTS; CURLL. Ill

religion than he did the existence of an indepen-
dent supreme Creator; but he did not believe the
expositions given by the divines

" He was a debauchee to the last degree, and so
injurious to society, that by filling his translations
with wretched notes, forged letters, and bad pictures,
he raised the price of a four shilling book to ten. Thus,
in particular, he managed Burnet's 'Archaeology.'
And when I told him he was very culpable in this and
other articles he sold, his answer was, ' What would I
have him to do ? He was a bookseller ; his translators
in pay lay three in a bed at the Pewter Platter inn,
in Holborn, and he and they were for ever at work to
deceive the public.' He likewise printed the lewdest
things. He lost his ears for * The Nun in her Smock,'
and another thing. As to drink, he was too fond of
money to spend any in making himself happy that
way ; but at another's expense he would drink every
day till he was quite blind and as incapable of self-
motion as a block. This was Edmund Curll. But
he died at last as great a penitent (I think in the
year 1748) as ever expired. I mention this to his
glory.

" As Curll knew the world well and was acquainted
with several extraordinary characters, he was of great
use to me at my first coming to town, as I knew
nobody nor any place. He gave me the true cha-
racters of many I saw ; told me whom I should avoid
and with whom I might be free. He brought me to
the playhouses and gave me a judicious account of
every actor. He understood these things well. No
man could talk better on theatrical subjects. He

112 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. V.

brought me likewise to Sadler's Wells ; to tlie night-
cellars, and to Torn King's, the famous night-house at
Covent Garden. As he was very knowing and well
known at such places, he soon made me as wise as
himself in these branches of learning ; and, in short,
in the space of a month I was as Avell acquainted in
London as if I had been there for years. My kind
preceptor spared no pains in lecturing. But what of
all things I thought most wonderful was the company
I saw at the Sieur Curll's. As he was intimate with

all the high [read ' pretty horsebreakers '] in

town, many of them frequented his shop to buy his
dialogues and other lively books. Some of these
girls he often asked to dine with him, and then I Avas
sure to be his guest."

After this impartial testimony to the character of
Mr. Curll, I am ready to acquit Pope of being a
malicious libeller. When in 1728-9 he gibbeted
Curll in ' The Dunciad,' and told us in a note to the
Second Book of that poem that he " carried the trade
many lengths beyond what it had ever before arrived
at, and was the envy and admiration of all his profes-
sion," the shadow of " this eminent man ". would ever
present itself to "the trade" with a pillory mar-
shalling them the way which they should go, if they
would attain the distinction which he had so recently
arrived at. His prosecution for printing two obscene
books was in the first year of George II., 1727. In
the indictment he is thus described : " Homo iniquus
et sceleratus, nequiter machinans et intendens bonos mores
subditorum hujus regni corrumpere"

In the spring, then, of 1716, there is a remarkable

CHAP. V. THE TOXSOXS ; LIXTOTTS ; CURLL. 113

meeting of three persons at the Swan Tavern, in
Fleet-street. Mr. Pope enters, accompanied by Mr.
Lintott. Mr. Curll has been sent for, and, according
to the custom of " the trade," wine is ordered. Mr.
Pope has to complain of a publication entitled ' The
Court Poems, published faithfully, as they were found
in a pocket-book, taken up in Westminster Hall.'
Associated with Curll as publisher was Mr. J. Roberts,
in Warwick-street, who in an advertisement prefixed
insinuates that the coffee-house critics assign them
either to a Lady of Quality, Mr. Gay, or the Translator
of Homer. Curll thought fit to publish an account
of this meeting : " My brother Lintott drank his half-
pint of old hock, Mr. Pope his half-pint of sack, and
I the same quantity of an emetic potion." He was
afterwards more direct in his accusation, holding that
his half-pint of canary had been poisoned by the ma-
levolent poet. In a few weeks appeared ' A full and
true account of a horrid and barbarous revenge by
poison, on the body of Mr. Edmund Curll, bookseller,
with a faithful copy of his last will and testament.'
Dennis took up the wondrous tale, and characterises
the charge against Pope, which he receives as vera-
cious, as " so black, so double, and so perfidious, that
perhaps a villain who is capable of breaking open a
house is not capable of that." At that time Swift
was the intimate friend of Pope, and had taught him
some of that grossness which makes their filth as
hateful as the worst obscenities of which Curll was
the degraded publisher. The * Full and true Account '
is unreadable at the present day.

It is a relief to turn awhile from the. fierce contro-

114 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. V.

versies and the vulgar lampoons of the great writer,
to view him pursuing his proper work, and receiving
its just reward. In 1712, when Pope was in his
twenty-fifth year, he commenced the translation of
' The Iliad.' He finished it in 1718. Like Dryden's
* Virgil,' it was published by subscription, at a guinea
a volume, each of the six volumes being delivered to
the subscribers as the printing was completed. The
subscription price was more than usually high ; but
through the unremitted exertions of the poet's friends,
literary and political, six hundred and fifty-four copies
were delivered at the original rate. The highest
bidder for the publication of ' The Iliad ' was Bernard
Lintott. He agreed to provide, at his own expense, all
the subscription and presentation copies, and, in addi-
tion, to pay the author two hundred pounds per volume.
This was the boldest offer for a copyright ever made,
in the days when great authors looked rather more
to places and pensions than to the liberality of book-
sellers. Mr. Lintott " was not a genteel man," as
Pope said of Dryden ; but he had munificent notions
of the proper wages of the skilled workmen of lite-
rature, such as were rarely understood half a century,
or even a century, later. Pope realised five thousand
three hundred and twenty pounds by this his most
continuous labour. Lintott believed that an edition
in folio would reimburse him, and that he might then
go to the great body of readers — such as bought the
'Spectator' — to make a large profit out of cheap
editions. His plan was anticipated by the piratical
dealers, who caused a cheap edition to be printed in
Holland. Lintott met this unjust proceeding like

CHAP. V. THE TOXSONS; LIXTOTTS; CURLL. 115

a mail of sense and spirit. He immediately brought
out a duodecimo edition, at half-a-crown a volume.
In the Annals of Mr. Bowyer's Press we find, in
1720, "The six volumes of Pope's 'Homer,' finely
printed from an Elzevir letter." In a former work
I said, '•' It may well be doubted if Pope would have
made five thousand three hundred pounds if he had
originally gone, without the quarto subscription pro-
cess, to the buyers of duodecimos. Perhaps even the
duodecimos would not have sold extensively without
the reputation of the quartos. There was no great
reading public to make a fortune for the poet out of
small profits upon large sales." * I perhaps should
have said that it might have been doubted whether
the poet would have speedily realised his little fortune.
Mr. Singer, the editor of ' Spence's Anecdotes,' states
that Pope " was at first apprehensive that the contract
might ruin Lintott, and endeavoured to dissuade him
from thinking any more of it. The event, however,
proved quite the reverse. The success of the work
was so unparalleled as at once to enrich the book-
seller, and prove a productive estate to his family."
The fortunes of the family were certainly improving
since the time when Dunton wrote of Bernard, in
allusion .to Durfey, the music-master, as his leading
genius — " He, I dare engage, will never want an
author of sol-fa" In Humphrey Wanley's Diary
of January, 1726, there is this entry : " Young Mr.
Lintott, the bookseller, came inquiring after arms,
as belonging to his father, mother, and other relations,

* ' Once upon a Time,' edit, 1865, p. 281.

i 2

116 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. V.

who now, it seems, want to turn gentlefolks. I could
find none of their names." Young Mr. Lintott, the
bookseller, was Henry, the son of Bernard, and suc-
ceeded to his father's business.

The dignity of the system of publishing books by
subscription was, perhaps, sufficiently vindicated
by the success of Dryden's ' Virgil,' of Steele's repub-
lication of ' The Tatler,' of Pope's « Iliad,' and his
* Shakespeare.' Whilst small authors, who adopted
this mode of sale, were frequently little higher than
the begging-letter writers, the occasional grandeur of
the subscription plan is illustrated by the fact that the
Dean and Chapter of Christchurch, Oxford, entered
into an engagement with Lintott, in 1715, that he
should print by subscription the works of Geoffrey
Chaucer, dividing the profits with the Dean and
Chapter, for the purpose of finishing the Peckwater
Quadrangle. Mr. Urry, a student of Christchurch,
had obtained a patent for the exclusive printing of
his edition, which he assigned, in 1714, to Bernard
Lintott. But this ingenious Scotchman dying in
1715, his executor, in conjunction with the authorities
of Christchurch, concluded this agreement with the
bookseller, it having been the intention of Mr. Urry
to devote 500?. to the purpose that the Dean and
Chapter subsequently contemplated. This edition
was issued in folio in 1721. Whether their share of
the profits realised the fourteen hundred pounds
which the Dean and Chapter anticipated does not
appear. It may be hoped that the success of the
subscription was not so large as long to deter other
scholars from editorial rivalry. The editor had strange

CHAP. V. THE TONSOXS ; LIXTOTTS ; CURLL. 117

notions of the licence that might be taken with an
early English author, which can only be paralleled
by the famous Perkins Shakspere. Till Mr. Tyrwhitt
took the work in hand there had been no competent
editor of Chaucer.

The attempted rivalry of Tickell with Pope in the
translation of Homer introduces us to one of the most
painful chapters in the history of literary quarrels.
It broke up the friendship of Pope with Addison.
How much better and happier the irascible poet
might have been under the leading of Addison, in-
stead of that of Swift, can scarcely now be predicated.
It was not to be. Three days after the announce-
ment that the first volume of Mr. Pope's translation
of Homer is finished, appeared this advertisement in
the same paper : " To-morrow will be published the
first book of Homer's ' Iliad,' translated by Mr. Tickell.
Printed for Jacob Tonson, at Shakspeare's Head,
against Katherine-street, in the Strand." In Spence's
' Anecdotes,' Pope is recorded as saying of Addison,
"He translated the first book of the 'Iliad' that
appeared as Tickell's ; and Steele has blurted it out
in his angry preface against Tickell." The editor of
Spence says that it was in a Dedication to Con-
greve of * The Drummer.' Mr. Singer adds : " Mr.
Nichols, in a note to his ' Collection of Poems,' vol.
iv., says, that Mr. Watts, the printer, told a friend
of his " that the Translation of the First Book of the
'Iliad' was in Tickell's handwriting, but much cor-
rected and interlined by ^Addison." Lintott seems
to have been perfectly aware of the temper in which
Pope would receive a copy of Tickell's translation,

118 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLEES. CHAP. V.

which he sent to him, immediately on its appearance,
with this note : " You have Mr. Tickell's book to divert
one hour. It is already condemned here; and the
malice and juggle at Button's is the conversation of
those who have spare moments from politics." Pope
says of himself that he was heated by what he had
heard, and wrote to Addison, that if he were to
speak severely of him in return for his behaviour,
it should be something in the following manner. He
then subjoined the first sketch of the twenty-two lines,
concluding with —

" Who would not weep if Atticus were he ? "

Addison, Pope says, used him very civilly ever after.
We have no information whether the quarrel of the
great writers extended to the publishers of the rival
translations. There is an anecdote in the supplement
to Spence, from which it appears that they long con-
tinued rivals. The authority for this anecdote is
Dr. Young himself. " Tonson and Lintott were both
candidates for printing some work of Dr. Young's.
He answered both their letters in the same morning,
and in his hurry misdirected them. When Lintott
opened that which came to him he found it begin :
' That Bernard Lintott is so great a scoundrel, that,'
&c. It must have been very amusing to have seen
him in his rage ; he was a great sputtering fellow."

Pope returned to his old bookseller, Tonson, when
he published his edition of Shakespeare. It was not
a success. Of the six quarto volumes, only about six
hundred copies were sold ; and the remainder of an
impression of seven hundred and fifty were disposed

CHAP. V. THE TOXSOXS ; LIXTOTTS ; CURLL. 119

of at a reduced price. Pope received a small remune-
ration for his editorial labours, 217?. 12s. His Pre-
face was a masterly composition, pregnant with good
sense, and elegant in style ; but the character of the
age, in which the higher art of the poet was im-
perfectly appreciated, is reflected in Pope's concep-
tion of Shakspere's genius. Theobald, three years
after, produced his edition, having previously pub-
lished a pamphlet, entitled ' Shakspeare Restored ;
or a Specimen of the many Errors, as well committed
as unamended, by Mr. Pope in his late edition.'
This attack, and Theobald's greater success, gave
him that place upon the throne of Dulness which
was afterwards occupied by Gibber. Lintott was the
publisher of the subscription edition of ' The Odyssey,'
in 1725. Pope, in announcing his proposals for this
translation, avowed that he had been assisted by
friends. He had undertaken the translation, but did
not claim to be the sole translator. Mr. Pope, the
undertaker, became a byeword amongst his numerous
unfriends. Pope gained nearly three thousand pounds
by this operation ; but Lintott was disappointed ; and
pretending to have discovered something fraudulent
in the agreement, threatened a suit in Chancery.
Pope quarrelled, of course, with him, and finally
elevated him to his ignoble position in ' The Dun-
ciad.' That Curll came in for the greater honours
of that poem is to be attributed to his share in
the mystery of the publication of Pope's Letters,
about which nearly as much has been written as
about " Junius." It is beside the purpose of this little
volume to enter upon this debatable ground. I

120 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. V.

am content to refer to the lucid account of the affair
by Mr. Carruthers ; to the elaborate discussions of
the elder D'Israeli ; and to the desire of Mr. Eoscoe
to vindicate Pope from the imputation of Johnson: —
"Being desirous to print his own Letters, and not
knowing how to do, without imputation of vanity,
what in this country has been done very rarely, he
contrived an appearance of compulsion ; that when
he could complain that his Letters were surrepti-
tiously published he might decently and defensively
publish them himself." Pope had an awkward con-
troversialist in Curll. His impudence was at once
spear and shield. One specimen may suffice of his
mode of attack and defence : "I have engraven
a new plate of Mr. Pope's head from Mr. Jervas's
painting ; and likewise intend to hang him up in effigy
for a sign to all spectators of his falsehood and my
own veracity, which I will always maintain under
the Scots' motto, Nemo me impune lacessit"

In the publication of the first edition of 'The
Dunciad,' in 1729, there was employed that mystifica-
tion which Pope and Swift delighted in as the herald
of their attacks upon their adversaries. It professed
to be printed originally in Dublin in 1728 ; but this
was really a reprint of a London edition. This was the
prelude to an enlarged quarto edition, which was
soon pirated. Pope went to the Court of Chancery
to obtain an injunction. He was not successful, as
the printer could not prove any property. The public
curiosity was stimulated by these law proceedings, as
was their manifest intent. Pope then assigned his
copyright to Lords Burlington, Oxford, and Bathurst,

CHAP. V. THE TONSOXS ; LESTOTTS ; CTJRLL. 121

and they re-assigned it to Lawton Gilliyer, who had
become Pope's bookseller, " with the sole right and
liberty of printing the same." There is a graphic
account of the excitement produced by the publica-
tion of 'The Dunciad.' It was held to have been
written by Savage, but is with much probability
attributed to Pope himself.

" On the day the book was first vended a crowd of
authors besieged the shop ; entreaties, advices, threats
of law and battery, nay, cries of treason, were all em-
ployed to hinder the coming out of ' The Dunciad.'
On the other side, the booksellers and hawkers made
as great an effort to procure it. What could a few
poor authors do against so great a majority as the
public ! There was no stopping a torrent with a
finger, so out it came. Many ludicrous circumstances
attended it. The Dunces (for by this name they were
called) held weekly clubs to consult of hostilities
against the author. One wrote a letter to a great
Minister, that Mr. Pope was the greatest enemy the
Government had ; and another bought his image in
clay, to execute him in effigy ; with which sad sort of
satisfaction the gentlemen were a little comforted.
Some false editions of the book having an owl in
their frontispiece ; the true one, to distinguish it, fixed
in its stead an ass laden with authors. Then another
surreptitious one being printed with the same ass,
the new edition in octavo returned for distinction to
the owl again. Hence arose a great contest of
booksellers against booksellers, and advertisements
against advertisements ; some recommending the
edition of the owl, and others the edition of the ass,

122 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. V.

by which names they came to be distinguished, to
the great honour also of the gentlemen of 'The
Dunciad.'"

I might here close this chapter, and leave the
shadows of the old booksellers of ' The Dunciad ' as
not quite fit to call up in decent company. " The
high heroic games" in which Lintott and Curll are
the chief antagonists are not redolent of attar of roses.
The six lines which describe the person and action of
the " huge Lintott" may be extracted with safety : —

" As when a dab-chick waddles through the copse
On feet and wings, and flies, and wades, and hops ;
So lab'ring on, with shoulders, hands, and head,
Wide as a windmill all his figure spread,
With arms expanded, Bernard rows his state,
And left-legg'd Jacob seems to emulate."

Another bookseller is introduced in even a more
filthy contest with Curll, Thomas Osborne. Pope
deposed Chapman, after the original edition of ' The
Dunciad/ and introduced Osborne, who, according to
Johnson, was so dull that he could not feel the poet's
gross satire. He properly belongs to a few years
later, when the ragged scholar who walked from Lich-
field into London, with his friend David Garrick, had
to earn his scanty wages under this arrogant old book-
seller, and has told how he had dealt with him : " Sir,
he was impertinent to me, and I beat him." Happily
there were many in this busy age of letters who were
worthy dealers in wares literary. One of these was
the great-nephew of the first Jacob Tonson. His
eulogium by Steevens, in his advertisement to his
edition of Shakspeare, in 1773, offers an example

CHAP. V. THE TOXSOXS; LINTOTTS; CURLL. 123

worthy of imitation to all who desire to regard the
publisher as something higher and worthier than
the ordinary John o' the Scales : —

" To suppose that a person employed in an extensive
trade lived in a state of indifference to loss and gain
would be to conceive a character incredible and
romantic ; but it may be justly said of Mr. Tonson
that he had enlarged his mind beyond solicitude
about petty losses, and refined it from the desire of
unreasonable profit. He was willing to admit those
with whom he contracted to the just advantage of
their own labours ; and had never learned to consider
the author as an under-agent to the bookseller. The
wealth which he inherited, or acquired, he enjoyed
like a man conscious of the dignity of a profession
subservient to learning. His domestic life was elegant,
and his charity was liberal. His manners were soft,
and his conversation was delicate; nor is, perhaps,
any quality in him more to be censured than that
reserve which confined his acquaintance to a small
number, and made his example less useful, as it was
less extensive. He was the last commercial name of
a family which will be long remembered ; and if
Horace thought it not improper to convey the Sosii
to posterity ; if rhetoric suffered no dishonour from
Quintilian's dedication to Trypho ; let it not be
thought that we disgrace Shakspeare by appending
to his works the name of Tonson."

The house in which the first Tonson carried on
business in his latter years was, as described in the
imprint of his books, at " Shakspeare's Head, over
against Catherine Street in the Strand." That house,

124 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. V.

No. 141, was remarkable as the shop of three of the
most eminent amongst the old booksellers.* Here
the elder Jacob might have looked out upon " the furies
of the football war," which Gay has so well described
in his ' Trivia.' Here Andrew Millar concluded, over
many a hospitable entertainment in his upper-rooms
(for the old days of booksellers' bargains at taverns
were over), his treaties with Fielding and Thomson,
with Hume and Robertson. Here Thomas Cadell
smiled with honest exultation as he wrote to Gibbon,
to tell him how wonderful was the success of 'The
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.' Illustrious
shadows flitted about that venerable house, which,
long since rebuilt, is now an insurance-office.

* See Peter Cunningham's ' Handbook of London.'

CHAP. VI. SAMUEL RICHARDSON. 125

CHAPTEE VI.

SAMUEL RICHARDSON.

N the first year of the reign of James II.,
1685, an ingenious artisan — a joiner, who
was a good draughtsman, and understood
architecture — hastily left his business
in London, and took up his abode somewhere in
Derbyshire. The execution of the Duke of Mon-
mouth had terrified this humble man, whose name
was Richardson ; for he had received favours from the
unhappy son of Charles II., and also from the Earl
of Shaftesbury. He was suspected in that awful
time ; and, had he not found a secure hiding-place,
would probably have been one of the sufferers whom
Chief-Justice Jeffreys sent to the gallows, or to a life
of field-labour in America. In 1689 Samuel Richard-
son was born. Though concealment from political
motives was no longer necessary as regarded his father,
he has carefully forborne to mention the precise
place in Derbyshire where he first saw the Sght, and
where he passed his childhood.

In 1753, the Rev. J. Stinstra, a Dutch minister,
who had translated * Clarissa,' wrote to this famous
novelist : — " May I ask you — (although I am too bold
my letter blushes not) — in what kind of life you have
been conversant from your youth? Have you, as

126 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. VI.

fame reports, been constantly employed in book-
selling ? Whence did you attain so accurate a know-
ledge of the various dispositions of nature, and of the
manners of mankind ? What was the first occasion
of your application to writing ? By what means have
you compiled your immortal works ? Did they flow
from your invention ? or, had you a model of a true
action before your eyes, which you adorned with
additional colourings ? " To questions so searching
and so flattering as these the complacent author
replies without reserve, as to the facts of his early
life. Out of these revelations let me call up the
shadow of a precocious boy, in his obscure home in
Derbyshire.

It is a summer afternoon; school is over; the
village boys are playing at ball, or kite-flying, on
the green, in front of a row of decent cottages. A
matron, with laughing girls about her, looks out of
her woodbine-covered lattice, and exclaims, " There
is that poor little Gravity again, moping about by
himself. Bring him in, Susan, and let us hear some
of his fine stories." Susan runs out, and salutes the
little fellow with, " Mr. Serious, why don't you play
like the rest of your schoolfellows?" " I don't want
to play, Miss." " Well, then, come in with me, and
you shatyhave a glass of gooseberry-wine." Sammy
Eichardson takes her hand, and he, seated on a low
stool, soon begins to tell a story of a servant-man pre-
ferred by a fine young lady for his goodness, to a lord
who was a libertine. Two or three summers, and two
•or three winters, pass away, and still the little boy
is in great request; for when half-a-dozen young

CHAP. VI. SAMUEL RICHARDSON. 127

women are gathered together in a neighbourly fashion
to work with their needles, Sammy is reading to them,
or telling fresh stories, " all of which carried with
them an useful moral." He had a talent for letter-
writing, from his earliest youth ; and when scarcely
eleven years old, got into some trouble for writing
spontaneously an epistle, full of Scripture texts, to
a widow of fifty, who pretended to a zeal for religion,
and was a constant frequenter of church ordinances,
but who was continually fomenting quarrels amongst
all her acquaintances by backbiting and scandal.
This was dangerous work for the critical boy, as
his handwriting was known. He has attained his
thirteenth year, having made no acquisitions of
knowledge out of the range of the few English books
that are within his reach. But he was gathering up
materials, in a strange way, for the exercise of his
future art. Let me view him as he is walking by
the side of a streamlet under a Derbyshire hill, in
earnest conversation with one of his " young women
of taste and reading." She it is who is eloquent in
talk ; he is only an attentive listener. Another even-
ing comes, and he is reading to her a manuscript,
which she carefully puts into her pocket, and smiles
a sweet farewell. Are they lovers ? Has the bashful
boy thus early declared his affection ? It is not so ;
it ought not to be so. In a few weeks young Samuel
has a private meeting with another young lady, and
there is a similar earnest conference — sighs and tears
on the maiden's part — silent acquiescence from the
youth. Autumn succeeds to summer; the hedges
and woods are getting bare of leaves ; but far away

128 SHADOWS OP THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. VI.

from prying eyes, a third damsel is wandering with
the same youthful listener. It is not one meeting
only with either of them at which these conferences
are carried on. There is a mystery. When that
boy has become a man of sixty-five he explains it
to his reverend Dutch correspondent. "I was not
more than thirteen when three of these young women,
unknown to each other, having a high opinion of my
taciturnity, revealed to me their love-secrets, in order
to induce me to give them copies to write after, or
correct, for answers to their lovers' letters : nor did
any one of them ever know I was the secretary to the
others. I have been directed to chide, and even
repulse, when an offence was either taken or given,
at the very time that the heart of the chider or re-
pulser was open before me, overflowing with esteem
and affection, and the fair repulser, dreading to be
taken at her word, directing this word or that ex-
pression to be softened or changed. One, highly
gratified with her lover's fervour, and vows of ever-
lasting love, has said, when I have asked her direc-
tion, ' I cannot tell you what to write, but,' her heart
on her lips, 'you cannot write too kindly.'" Mr.
Stinstra expresses his opinion that the novelist is
indebted to this secretaryship to young women for
the characters he had drawn of his heroines. " This
opportunity did little more for me," replies Mr.
Eichardson, " at so tender an age, than to point, as
I may say, or lead my inquiries, as I grew up, into
the knowledge of the female heart; and, knowing
something of that, I could not be an utter stranger
to that of man."

CHAP. VI. SAMUEL RICHARDSON. 129

I must descend with Master Samuel from these alti-
tudes, and follow him into the dead level of common
life. In 1706 he was bound apprentice to Mr. John
Wilde, described by Dunton as having " a very noble
printing-house in Aldersgate Street." Looking back
upon this period, Richardson says, " I served a diligent
seven years to it ; to a master who grudged every
hour to me that- tended not to his profit ; even of
those times of leisure and diversion which the refrac-
toriness of my fellow-apprentices obliged him to allow
them, and were usually allowed by other masters to
their apprentices. I stole from the hours of rest and
relaxation my reading times for improvement of my
mind. I took care that even my candle was of my own
purchasing, that I might not, in the most trifling in-
stance, make my master a sufferer." That hard task-
master called the lad " the pillar of his house." For
six or seven years after the expiration of his appren-
ticeship Richardson continued at his trade, as a com-
positor, a reader, and part of the time as an overseer.
Of frugal habits, he was at length enabled, having
taken up his freedom in 1719, to become a master
printer, in a small way, in a Court in Fleet Street.
He afterwards removed to Salisbury Square, where we
have seen Thomas Gent employed by him in 1723-
He was truly then "the ingenious Mr. Richardson;"
for he had become something more than a careful
printer in his connexion with booksellers. He com-
piled Indexes, and wrote Prefaces, and what he terms
" honest Dedications." His knowledge of the heart
of man was probably extended by his acquaintance
with the clever and profligate Duke of Wharton ; for

E

130 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. VI.

whom he printed ' The True Briton,' under conditions
that must have been embarrassing to its conductors.
The printer stipulated that he should not be con-
cerned in the typographical production of any papers
that might endanger his own safety. The earliest
letter of his published correspondence is with Aaron
Hill, to whom he writes : " As to my silence I have
been at one time exceedingly busy in getting ready
some volumes of Journals, to entitle myself to a pay-
ment which yet I never had, — no, not to the value
of a shilling, though the debt is upwards of three
thousand pounds, and though I have pressed for it,
and been exceedingly pressed for the want of it."
The patronage of Mr. Speaker Onslow gave him this
veiy unsatisfactory piece of business. Delays in pay-
ment for work to honest traders, and the encourage-
ment of every sort of jobbery and fraud amongst
those who would bribe the underlings, was, during
most part of the eighteenth century, and sometimes
later, the usual occupation of under secretaries and
auditors of public accounts.

Thus Samuel Richardson pursued " the even tenour
of his way," till 1740, when two of " the trade," Mr.
Rivington and Mr. Osborne, proposed to him to under-
take for them a literary work, rather more interesting
than Indexes and Dedications. This, in a letter to
Aaron Hill, is his own account of an occurrence
which not only changed the ordinary course of the
honest printer's life, but had a marked influence on
the future of English literature : " Two booksellers,
my particular friends, entreated me to write for
them a little volume of Letters, in a common style,

CHAP. VI. SAMUEL RICHARDSON. 131

on such subjects as might be of use to those country
readers who were unable to indite for themselves.
' Will it be any harm,' said I, ' in a piece you want to
be written so low, if we should instruct them how
they should think and act in common cases, as well
as indite ? ' They were the more urgent with me to
begin the little volume for this hint. I set about it ;
and, in the progress of it, wrote two or three letters
to instruct handsome girls who were obliged to go
out to service, as we phrase it, how to avoid the snares
that might be laid against their virtue. And hence
sprung ' Pamela.' " *

Without some acquaintance with the general cha-
racter of the light reading of the time of George II., it
would not be easy to comprehend the unbounded admi-
ration with which the first work of Kichardson was re-
ceived. With a few exceptions, the novels were either
excessively dull or grossly licentious. Richardson, in
great measure, avoided the dullness ; and his professed
object was to inculcate moral lessons. His story was
that of ' Pamela ; or Virtue rewarded.' Thus it was that
in an age when the chief reward of virtue was held to
consist in worldly advantages — in riches, in the com-
mand of comforts and luxuries, in a high social posi-
tion, in fine houses and equipages — that the praises
of the high morality of Richardson's novel by his
contemporaries were in some degree misapplied.
' Pamela ' was recommended from the pulpit. One
critic holds that if all other books were to be burnt,

* ' Correspondence of Samuel Richardson,' vol. i. p. 52 of Life,
by Mrs. Barbauld.

K 2

132 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. VI.

this book, next to the Bible, ought to be preserved.
Another says, he would bring up his son to be virtuous
by giving him ' Pamela ' as soon as he could read.
One eminent man, indeed, writes candidly to the
author, that he understands the ladies complain that
they cannot read the letters without blushing. Richard-
son, from the very nature of his story, appears, in the
general license of his time, to have fallen into the error
upon which he is so bitter in letters full of contemp-
tuous reprobation of Fielding and Sterne. But the
moral of the story was not an exalted one. Mrs.
Barbauld has truly said that " a novel written on the
side of virtue was considered as a new experiment."
It perfectly succeeded ; for the virtue was not too
refined or disinterested to be above the comprehension
of the worldly-minded or the uneducated. A beautiful
girl — the daughter of humble parents of true respec-
tability, honest, loving, patient, and pious — goes forth
from her home to be a servant in a rich family. Her
master is drawn as one of the coarsest of libertines ;
proud, selfish, of no tenderness of nature ; a slave to
his passionate impulses ; and yet, after attempts which
could scarcely be called seduction, she cherishes de-
signs, amidst all her virtuous resistance, to become
honourably allied to him, and she completes her pur-
pose. Nevertheless, there is so much of truth and
nature in the conduct of the story that we may have
perfect confidence in the anecdote told by Sir John
Herschel, of the blacksmith of a village who read
'Pamela' to his neighbours collected round his
anvil. When the hero and heroine were brought to-
gether to live long and happily, according to the

CHAP. VI. SAMUEL RICHARDSON. 133

most approved rules, the congregation were so de-
lighted as to raise a great shout, and procuring the
church keys, actually set the parish bells ringing.
This was a just tribute to the genius of the author,
but perhaps as much so to the very intelligible sort
of poetical justice which was the moral of the purity
of the daughter of Gaffer and Gammer Andrews.

Two years after the appearance of Richardson's
first novel, Fielding published ' History and Adven-
tures of Joseph Andrews and of his friend Abraham
Adams,' being "brother to the illustrious Pamela
whose virtue is at present so famous." Richard-
son appears never to have forgiven this burlesque;
but it was very soon forgotten by the public as an
attempt to ridicule his overwrought sentiment, and
was received as a genuine picture of real life in its
every-day aspects. Richardson used to say that
had he not known Fielding, he should have believed
the author of 'Joseph Andrews' to have been an
ostler. But there was something higher in this novel
than descriptions of inns, and stage-coaches, and
country squires. The friend of Joseph Andrews —
Mr. Abraham Adams — who took his cup of ale in the
squire's kitchen, and who, in the dusk of an evening,
riding into an inn, sat down in the common public
room and called for a pipe of tobacco — he is some-
thing higher than Richardson has described him:
" Parson Young sat for Fielding's Parson Adams,
a man he knew, and only made a little more absurd
than he is known to be." * He, to my mind, is one of

* ' Correspondeuce of Richardson,' vol. iv. p. 60.

134 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. VI.

the three great English worthies, who may take his
due place with Sir Eoger de Coverley and Uncle Toby.
The handsome Joseph — with his bravery, his true
modesty, his constancy — is of a higher order of virtue
than that of his reputed sister. Yet Thackeray is
scarcely just when he says : " Fielding, no doubt, began
to write this novel in ridicule of ' Pamela,' for which
work one can understand the hearty contempt and
antipathy which such an athletic and boisterous genius
as Fielding's must have entertained. He couldn't
do otherwise than laugh at the puny Cockney book-
seller, pouring out endless volumes of sentimental
twaddle, and hold him up to scorn as a moll-coddle
and a milksop." The natures of the two novelists were
antagonistic, as were their education and their habits.
Yet, I doubt if, when Fielding proposed to write
a book in ridicule of 'Pamela/ he disliked and
utterly scorned, and laughed at the author. Thackeray
is nearer the truth when he says: "Richardson's
sickening antipathy for Harry Fielding is quite as
natural as the other's laughter and contempt at
the sentimentalist." "If," as the author of 'The
English Humorists ' says, " Richardson disliked
Fielding's works quite honestly," it is some extenua-
tion of his prejudices that " the puny Cockney book-
seller" had been an early and a kind friend to
the brilliant and dissipated Etonian, whose ex-
travagance compelled him to write plays and
miscellanies for a subsistence, long before he became
famous as a novelist.

Richardson's ' Clarissa ' was begun to be published
in 1747. Of his three novels, this is unquestionably

CHAP. VI. SAMUEL RICHARDSON. 135

the one in which he displays a power that can scarcely
be called by any other name than genius. He tells
Mr. Stinstra that he " almost accidentally slid into
the writing of ' Pamela.' " But if I may judge from
his numerous letters to ladies, who were continually
making suggestions as one volume after another of
' Clarissa ' was published, I should hold that he worked
upon a fixed principle of art, and had a regular plan
for the conduct of his narrative. Stinstra either mis-
took him, or Eichardson was deceiving himself, when
his Dutch correspondent says, " I am extremely asto-
nished, Sir, by your telling me that you never write
by a plan ; and when you ended one letter, hardly
knew what would be your next. What a happy
genius, that can thus prosecute his way through so
many mazes and labyrinths which perplex your
common readers, and never deviate, without ever con-
sulting a map ! " He is sometimes apologetical to his
critical ladies, and charmingly complimentary ; but
beneath his honeyed words there is always a refusal to
alter a single feature of his characters, or to deviate
a hair's breadth from his purpose in the catastrophe.
' Clarissa ' is essentially what we now call " a sensation
novel." There would be no hesitation in ascribing
tin's character to it, if what Shenstone says of its
author were not perfectly true — " he wants the art of
abridgment in everything he has yet wrote." Let
me glance at its plot to justify this assertion. Clarissa
is pressed by her parents to marry a man she dislikes.
She is placed under the most severe restraint. She
has had a lover, graceful, accomplished, witty, every
way fascinating ; but he is a libertine, and she knows
it. Clarissa throws herself for protection upon Love-

136 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. VI.

lace, when she elopes from her father's house. By
this rash act, into which she was betrayed by fear
and not passion, the unprincipled man has her, to
some extent, in his power ; but her cleverness came
to the aid of her purity, and for awhile she baffles all
his attempts at her destruction. Lady Bradshaigh,
writing to Richardson under the name of Belfour, in
1748, expresses her dread of a fatal catastrophe :
" After you have brought the divine Clarissa to the
very brink of destruction, let me entreat (may I say
insist upon) a turn that will make your almost despair-
ing readers half mad with joy. . . . If I was to
die for it, 1 cannot help being fond of Lovelace. A
sad dog! why would you make him so wicked and
yet so agreeable ? ... If you disappoint me, may
•the hatred of all the young, beautiful, and virtuous,
for ever be your portion ! . . . Now make Love-
lace and Clarissa unhappy, if you dare." The in-
exorable man will disappoint her. He will not have
a happy ending. He will not abate a jot of his great
moral, that a man in whom the seeds of wickedness
are thickly sown cannot properly be made happy,
because he cannot be reformed. " Religion never was
at so low an ebb as at present ; and if my work must
be supposed of the novel kind, I was willing to try if
a religious novel would do good." There is nothing in
the modern sensational novel that can compare with
the boldness of the catastrophe of Clarissa. Love-
lace, if the moral had been carried out, would have
found a halter provided by the law for his atrocity
towards his victim, who dies by her own hand,
whilst her destroyer instead shares the common fate
of many a fine gentleman of his time — that of falling

CHAP. VI. SAMUEL RICHARDSON. 137

in a duel. At this distance of time some of the praises
heaped upon Richardson for ' Clarissa ' seem alto-
gether extravagant. Martin Sherlock believes that the
greatest effort of genius that perhaps was ever made
was forming the plan of ' Clarissa Harlowe.' Rous-
seau, in a letter to D'Alembert, holds that nothing
was ever written equal to or approaching it in any
language. Diderot is somewhat more moderate in
his commendations, but quite strong enough to repre-
sent the enthusiasm of Frenchmen for the divine
Richardson. Mrs. Barbauld says she " well remem-
bers a Frenchman who paid a visit to Hampstead for
the sole purpose of finding out the house in the Flask-
walk where Clarissa lodged, and was surprised at the
ignorance or indifference of the inhabitants on that
subject. The Flask- walk was to him as much classic
ground as the rocks of Meillerie to the admirers of
Rousseau." Dr. Edward Young, who looks upon
Richardson as an instrument of Providence, gives
perhaps the most extraordinary proof of his enthusiasm
that was ever manifested from author to bookseller :
" Suppose in the title-page of the * Night Thoughts '
you should say, ' Published by the Author of Cla-
rissa ? ' "

The vast accession of fame which Richardson ac-
quired by ' Clarissa Harlowe/ brought upon him,
nothing loath, more and more coddling from the bevy
of correspondents that he calls his " ladies." We fear
they rather irritated him when they told of the great
popularity of ' Tom Jones.' Richardson and Fielding
appear to have been then running side by side. Lady
Bradshaigh says : " As to ' Tom Jones,' I am fatigued

138 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLEKS. CHAP. VI.

with the name, having lately fallen into the company
of several young ladies, who had each a Tom Jones
in some part of the world, for so they call their
favourites ; and ladies, you know, are for ever talking
of their favourites. Last post I received a letter from
a lady who laments the loss of her Tom Jones ; and
from another, who was happy in the company of her
Tom Jones. In like manner, the gentlemen have
their Sophias. A few days ago, in a circle of gentle-
men and ladies, who had their Tom Jones's and their
Sophias, a friend of mine told me he must show me
his Sophia, the sweetest creature in the world, and
immediately produced a Dutch mastiff puppy." *

Richardson's most elaborate work, ' Sir Charles
Grandison,' appears to have been in preparation in
1752. Mrs. Donnellan asks what he can mean by
•seeming uncertain whether he should publish his new
work. His reply is modest : " Have I not, Madam,
already obtruded upon the world many volumes ; and
have I not reason to apprehend that the world will
be tired of me if I do? Where will this scribbler
stop, will it not be asked ? But when no more can
be written or published by the same hand, then in-
dulgence will possibly for that very reason be exerted
in favour of the new piece. And a defunct author
will probably meet with better quarter than a living
one ; especially as he is known to be a man in busi-
ness, an obscure man, and one who is guilty of a very
great presumption in daring to write at all, or do
anything but print the works of others." t At this

* ' Correspondence of Richardson,' vol. iv. p. 280.
t Ibid, vol. iv. p. 59.

CHAP. VI. SAMUEL RICHARDSON. 139

time Fielding had preceded Richardson in the race
for popularity by the publication of his ' Amelia.'
The bepraised author of ' Clarissa ' might have been
more heroic and generous than to have written as he
then did about Fielding ; but he had lived in a vicious
atmosphere — his ladies had spoilt him. He writes to
Mrs. Donnellan : " You guess that I have not read
' Amelia.' Indeed I have read but the first volume.
I had intended to go through with it ; but I found
the characters and situations so wretchedly low and
dirty, that I imagined I could not be interested for
any one of them ; and to read and not to care what
became of the hero and heroine, is a task that I
thought I would leave to those who had more leisure
than I am blessed with." * Not even his own great
success can make him forget the good-natured ridi-
cule of the virtuous Pamela. He writes to Mr.
Edwards : " Mr. Fielding has met with the disap-
probation you foresaw he would meet with, of his
' Amelia.' He is, in every paper he publishes under
the title of the ' Common Garden,' contributing to
his own overthrow. He has been overmatched in his
own way by people whom he had despised, and whom
he thought he had vogue enough, from the success
his spurious brat ' Tom Jones ' so unaccountably met
with, to write down ; but who have turned his own
artillery against him and beat him out of the field,
and made him even poorly in his Court of Criticism
give up his ' Amelia,' and promise to write no more
.on the like subjects." t

* ' Correspondence of Kichardson,' vol. iv. p. 60.
t Ibid, vol. Hi. p. 33.

140 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. VI.

The blindness of Richardson to the merits of
Fielding can scarcely be attributed to the common
jealousy of authors. They had many antipathies in
common, and even more " imperfect sympathies."
Richardson had no sense of humour. He prefers
the ' Rambler ' to the ' Spectator.' Of Sterne he can
only see the indelicacies : " Who is this Yorick ? you
are pleased to ask me. You cannot, I imagine, have
looked into his books — execrable I cannot but call
them ; for I am told that the third and fourth volumes
are worse, if possible, than the two first — which only
I have had the patience to run through. One ex-
tenuating circumstance attends his works, that they
are too gross to be inflaming." * And yet, with the
most perfect bonhommie, he drew a portrait of him-
self, which, if it had been produced by any other
artist, would have been deemed the perfection of
caricature. It really says much for the simplicity of
his mind, with all its sentimentalities, that he could
tell, without the slightest apprehension of laying
himself open to ridicule and probably to some sus-
picion of his immaculate purity, of a ruddy plump
gentleman of about sixty-five walking through the
Park, with his " eye always on the ladies," and " look-
ing back if he greatly likes or dislikes " the appear-
ance of any one he meets : " I go through the Park
once or twice a week to my little retirement ; but I
will for a week together be in it every day three or
four hours, at your command, till you tell me you
have seen a person who answers to this description^

* ' Correspondence,' vol. v. p. 146.

CHAP. VI. SAMUEL RICHARDSON. 141

namely, Short; rather plump than emaciated, not-
withstanding his complaints; about five foot five
inches ; fair wig ; lightish cloth coat, all black be-
sides ; one hand generally in his bosom, the other a
cane in it, which he leans upon under the skirts of
his coat usually, that it may imperceptibly serve him
as a support when attacked by sudden tremors or
start-lings, and dizziness, which too frequently attack
him, but, thank God, not so often as formerly ; look-
ing directly foreright, as passers-by would imagine,
but observing all that stirs on either side of him
without moving his short neck ; hardly ever turning
back : of a light-brown complexion ; teeth not yet
failing him ; smoothish faced, and ruddy cheeked : at
some times looking to be about sixty-five, at other
times much younger; a regular even pace, stealing
away ground, rather than seeming to rid it : a gray
eye, too often overclouded by mistiness from the
head : by chance lively — very lively it will be, if he
have hope of seeing a lady whom he loves and honours :
his eye always on the ladies ; if they have very large
hoops, he looks down and supercilious, and as if he
would be thought wise, but perhaps the sillier for
that : as he approaches a lady, his eye is never fixed
first upon her face, but upon her feet, and thence he
raises it up, pretty quickly for a dull eye ; and one
would think (if we thought him at all worthy of ob-
servation) that from her air and (the last beheld) her
face, he sets her down in his mind as so or so, and
then passes on to the next object he meets; only
then looking back, if lie greatly likes or dislikes, as

142 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. VI.

if he would see if the lady appear to be all of a piece,
in the one light or in the other." *

The self-complacency of Richardson's authorship is
one of the most remarkable exhibitions of a vanity
which seems almost incompatible with high talent.
And yet the elder D 'Israeli, who gives several
examples of this quality of mind, calls him "the
Shakspeare of Novelists." Boswell says, " Richardson
had little conversation, except about his own works,
of which Sir Joshua Reynolds said he was always
willing to talk, and glad to have them introduced."
Mr-. D'Israeli states that Mrs. Charlotte Lenox " was
a regular visitor at Richardson's, and she could scarcely
recollect one visit which was not taxed by our author
reading one of his voluminous letters, or two or three,
if his auditor was quiet and friendly." He prefixed
to ' Pamela,' in the character of its editor, the most
extravagant eulogium upon his own works. He made
a most elaborate collection of the " sentiments " in
' Clarissa.' To each volume of ' Grandison ' he pre-
fixed a complete index, " with as much exactness,"
writes the author of the ' Curiosities of Literature,'
" as if it were a History of England." What mat-
tered it to the happy writer if the friends of his
own day sometimes laughed at him ; he regarded not
their covert smiles. Boswell tells a story, upon the
authority of " a literary lady " — Mrs. Lenox — that at
a dinner given by Richardson, a gentleman recently
returned from Paris mentioned that he had seen

* ' Correspondence,' vol. iv. p. 290.

CHAP. VI. SAMUEL RICHARDSON. 143

' Clarissa ' lying on the king's brother's table. Part
of the company being engaged in talking, Richardson
affected not to attend to what was especially meant
for him. But when he thought that a moment of
silence was a favourable opportunity for all hearing,
he turned to the polite traveller, with — " I think, Sir,

you were saying somewhat about " " A mere

trifle, Sir, not worth repeating." Richardson did not
speak ten words more the whole day, says Boswell,
and maliciously adds that Doctor Johnson was present,
and appeared much to enjoy his mortification.

In 1756 Richardson wrote to Mr. Defreval in Paris,
" I am teazed by a dozen ladies of note and of virtue
to give them a good man, as they say I have been
partial to their sex, and unkind to my own." In
spite of his business engagements and his "nervous
infirmities," the idea of a Good Man took firm hold
of his mind, and he determined to write a novel with
that title. Little as he was inclined to relish any
bantering, he might have been told that this title
would have been obnoxious to the contumely of a
bad joke — that to the question of Horace — "Vir
bonus est quis?" — the wicked world would answer,
" Vir bonus est quiz f " ' Sir Charles Grandison '
became the loftier name of a novel which was des-
tined to be the especial favourite of the ladies.
Female critics are at his side as he proceeds in his
work, — not in the unromantic printing-house in Salis-
bury-square, but in his Grotto at North End, Ham-
mersmith. Day by day he reads his Manuscript to
the charming visitors who are always at his house.
They weep ; they admire aloud ; they write verses

144 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. VI.

in praise of Harriet Byron ; they are astonished at
the wonderful hero, and have no conception that
he is

" A faultless monster that the world ne'er saw."

Sir Charles Grandison, Baronet, is a prig. But with
what surpassing art is the story developed ! The
author in his Preface says, as an excuse for the bulk
of his ' Collection of Familiar Letters,' written, as it
were, to the moment, that " mere facts and characters
might be comprised in a much smaller compass;
but would they be equally interesting ? . . . . There
is not one episode in the whole, nor, after Sir Charles
Grandison is introduced, one letter inserted but Avhat
tends to illustrate the main design." I have said,
in another place, "We remember to have heard an
eminent lawyer declare that he studied Eichardson's
plots as he would study a mass of evidence in a com-
plicated case, and that the extreme art by which the
chain was kept entire, in links not always apparent,
could be readily traced by one who brought the legal
mind to discover something beyond meaningless pro-
lixity in the endless details of these novels." I
apprehend there are few who would attempt this
labour in our busier times. My friend was young —
perhaps without his " First Brief " — when he applied
to such a task, persuading himself, in dwelling upon
the charms of Harriet, or the miseries of Clementina,
that he was carrying on his legal education. But he
remains constant to his early love, and writes, in
answer to my question if he solaces himself with
Eichardson now — " I can even read his works again
with pleasure, which I attribute mainly to the won-

CHAP. VI. SAMUEL RICHARDSON. 145

derful reality of his figures. Each letter- writer shows
himself or herself, and the other dramatis personce, in
a new aspect; and all the aspects taken together
make a consistent whole." I fear there will never
be a revival, in these degenerate days of three-volume
novels in large type, of the devotion which rarely
wearied of a story told in some three or four hundred
epistlea I lately asked at a country circulating
library for ' Clarissa ' or 'Sir Charles Grandison,'
and the worthy caterer of literary novelties told me
he had never heard of these books.

I scarcely know how to leave Richardson the
novelist, to turn to the shadow of Richardson the
bookseller. He led the advanced guard — after their
first captain, Defoe — of that illustrious company,
who for a century and a half have been carrying into
English homes new and ever-varied sources of enjoy-
ment, aye, and of instruction. Out upon the pompous
coxcomb, Sir John Hawkins, who says, " of a class of
authors " who " vended their compositions when com-
pleted to those booksellers who would give most for
them," that " the first publication of the kind was the
' Pamela ' of Mr. Richardson, which, being read with
great eagerness by the young people of the time,
and recommended from the pulpit, begat such a
craving for more of the same stuff, as tempted some
men, whose necessities and abilities were nearly com-
mensurate, to try their success in this new kind of
writing." He would depreciate Richardson by say-
ing " he was a man of no learning nor reading." He
would depreciate Fielding by describing him as " the
inventor of that slang phrase, goodness of heart,

L

14-6 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. VI.

which is every day used as a substitute for probity,
and means little more than the virtues of a horse or
a dog : in short, he has done more towards corrupting
the rising generation than any writer we know of."
Good Samuel Richardson — for you really were a good
man, in a higher sense to my mind than your own
' Sir Charles Grandison ' — forgive me if I cannot for-
bear a smile now and then at your little vanities, so
inseparable from the adulation of your "ladies" of
every degree, from the precise Mrs. Chapone to the
erring Mrs. Pilkington ; from men of various morals,
from Dr. Young to Colley Gibber. You are, perhaps,
amongst the most famous of those who have been
writers as well as publishers ; but you command my
admiration from the fact that you never neglected
the duties of your station, to surrender yourself to the
temptations that beset the man who depends upon
authorship alone for holding a firm standing in social
life. There is sterling honesty in the words which
you wrote in the height of your reputation, but when
you still had that work to do, which the dignified
Mr. Harris regards as " the sordid views of trade."
Brave printer of Salisbury-square, you were not
ashamed to write in your sixtieth year, to your
friend, Mr. Defreval, " You know how nay business
engages me. You know by what snatches of time I
write, that I may not neglect that, and that I may
preserve that independency which is the comfort of
rny life. I never sought out of myself for patrons.
My own industry and God's providence have been
my whole reliance. The great are not great to me
unless they are good. And it is a glorious privilege

CHAP. VI. SAMUEL RICHAEDSOX. 147

that a middling man enjoys who has preserved his
independency, and can occasionally (though not
stoically) tell the world what he thinks of that
world, in hopes to contribute, though by his mite, to
mend it." *

I cannot forbear to linger a little while with the
author of 'Grandison,' in his double capacity of writer
and printer. He has been busy all the year with his
sixth volume. He has been approaching the denoue-
ment, as he looks in the summer out of his study-
window at Hammersmith upon three or four laughing
girls who are gathering strawberries in his garden.
But now, the bright days of October are passing away,
and he must go early to Salisbury-square, happy if he
can find a leisure half-hour or two for making Sir
Charles and Harriet blessed, to the satisfaction of
those amiable ladies who rejoice in happy endings.
It is the first of November. He burns a candle in his
private room, for the little square is gloomy with the
morning fog. Mr. Toovey, his overseer, is out — which
is fortunate ; for Mr. Richardson's orders are that no
inferior person in his establishment shall approach
him. His nerves are not strong enough to discuss
business matters with his workmen. He takes his
manuscript from his capacious pocket, and spreads it
upon his desk. He has conveyed a brilliant company
to church in eight coaches. He has got the bride
and bridegroom to the altar. Sir Charles, with his
usual grace, has put the ring on the finger of the
most charming woman in England. The congrega-

* ' Correspondence,' vol. v. p. 273.

L2

148 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP VI.

tion have joined in the responses, to show their in-
terest in the celebration. But the author, who knows
how welcome are the minutest details of a wedding,
cannot get them out of the church without a few
more sentences, which have been haunting him in his
waking hours. He takes his office pen and writes
(in continuation of a most florid epistle by Miss
Selby), " Sir Charles, with a joy that lighted up a
more charming flush than usual upon his face, his
lively soul looking out of his fine eyes, yet with an
air as modest as respectful, did credit to our sex
before the applauding multitude, by bending his knee

to his sweet bride and saluting her " There is a

horrible outcry in a somewhat distant room of the
printing-office. Mr. Richardson exclaims, " Oh ! my
nerves, my nerves ! " — and rings his bell. The
attendant errand-boy enters. " What is that dreadful
din about ? Go and see." Mr. Richardson in vain
attempts to proceed with a little speech of Grandi-
son to his Harriet, now no more Byron. The in-
spiration is gone. " Please, sir," says the errand-boy,
" they were a-cobbing Wall-eyed Tom." * " Aahorrid
custom ! " Mr. Toovey has now returned, and bows
low to his employer as he enters the sacred room.
" Mr. Toovey, have I not said that there shall be no
more cobbing in my office ?" " It can't be put down,
sir, provided there has been a regular Chapel to judge
the delinquent." "And what offence, Mr. Toovey,
had this howling victim committed ? " " He was sent

* See Webster's Dictionary for an explanation of " cobbing "
— a punishment not peculiar to printers, but once in favour
amongst them.

CHAP. VI. SAMUEL RICHARDSON. 149

to the Barley Mow for a gallon of porter, and was
seen drinking out of the can, and then filling it up
from the pump in Bride Lane." " Still, I say, chapel
or no chapel, there shall be no cobbing here." " Well,
sir, as you please ; but it is an ancient institution, as
time-honoured as the flogging-block at Westminster."
" But, Mr. Toovey, have I not also said that no beer
shall be brought into tin's office before noon." " As
you please, sir. But the pressmen had been working
all night upon ' Moore's Almanack,' and wanted a
little refreshment." " And why all night ?" "The
Treasurer would have it so. He wants ten thousand
perfect, a week before publishing day. He wants to
send them off by waggon, for the fast coaches, which
go to York in three days, are too expensive." "I
thought," murmurs Mr. Kichardson, " that evil would
come of the wicked spread of sham prognostications."
" Sham" cries Mr. Toovey ; " the pot calls the
kettle — " "Don't be vulgar, sir. You have been
reading Dr. Swift, the grossest of writers ; worse than
Fielding; a libellous fellow, though he did wear a
cassock, who tried to bring the genuine almanacks
into disrepute, when he told that dreadful falsehood
about the death of honest old Partridge. An enemy,
sir, to King George and the Company, and I have no
patience with him. — Wit, indeed!"

I write of "Old Booksellers," and I must say a
few more words about one of the most industrious
and prosperous of the race ; one singularly upright in
his dealings; above all tricks and evasions. The
poor boy from Derbyshire, who, after his apprentice-

150 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. VI.

ship, toiled for seven more years as a journeyman, is,
in 1754, Master of the Stationers' Company. As the
shy lad did not like play, the nervous man shrinks
from turtle. His correspondent, Mr. Edwards, author
of 'Canons of Criticism,' writes: — "The Company
cannot have a better Master, excepting for one part
of the duty, and that is the feasting part : and I can-
not but figure to myself the miserable example you
will set at the head of their loaded tables, unless you
have two stout jaw-workers for your wardens, and a
good hungry Court of Assistants." *

Although Kichardson, as a printer and bookseller,
was at this period carrying on his business on a large
scale to justify his promotion to this distinction
amongst his brethren, I catch glimpses of the in-
ternal economy of the printing-office in Salisbury
Square, to show me how really trifling were his
operations compared with the grand arrangements
of our modern era, when a daily newspaper contains
almost as many types as a volume of ' Sir Charles
Grandison;' when a Parliamentary Report of one
thousand pages can be set up and printed off in a
week; and when a fashionable publisher thinks it
slow work if a new edition of his last sensation novel
cannot be produced in a day. The Rev. Philip Skel-
ton, an Irish clergyman, of eccentric manners but
of great benevolence, was one of Richardson's em-
ployers. On the 17th of March, the candid printer
writes to him, " By the beginning of May you expect

* ' Correspondence,' vol. iii. p. 97.

CHAP. VI. SAMUEL RICHARDSON. 151

copies of perfect books. Upwards of sixty close
sheets to be done in so few weeks. Dear sir, what
an expectation ! " The impatient author replies, " I
care not how my work looks ; expedition and correct-
ness are all I desire." His complaints of delay fret
the busy printer. " What did I not do to serve you
to the utmost of my power? I parted with three
pieces of work ; I put out to several printers the new
edition of my * Grandison ;' took in help to the first
edition of the seventh volume ; I refused Dr. Leland's
last piece. But yet with all this, let me tell you,
my dear friend, that two such large volumes as yours
could not possibly be finished so soon as you ex-
pected, from the time they came into my hands, by
any one printer" *

At this period Eichardson was moved to come
before the public with a statement of his own griev-
ances. On September 14, 1753, he issued, ' The
Case of Samuel Kichardson, of London, Printer, on
the invasion of his Property in the 'History of Sir
Charles Grandison,' before publication, by certain
Booksellers in Dublin." It appears from Eichard-
son's statement that he had intended to send the
volumes of his last novel, as he did those of ' Clarissa
Harlowe,' to be printed in Ireland, before he pub-
lished them himself in London. But he was antici-
pated. The sheets were stolen from his warehouse,
and three Irish booksellers each published cheap
editions of nearly half the book before a volume

* ' Correspondence,' vol. v. p. 238.

152 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. VI.

appeared in England. He had heard an Irish book-
seller boast some years before, that he could procure,
from any printing-office in London, sheets of any
books printed in it, and while it was going on.
Richardson concludes his circumstantial narrative
with this remark: "At present the English writers
may be said, from the attempts and practices of the
Irish booksellers and printers, to live in an age of
liberty, but not of property." This occurrence excited
naturally the indignant denunciation of the English
press. The 'Gray's Inn Journal,' in relating the
case of Mr. Richardson, observed that " a greater
degree of probity might be expected from booksellers
on account of their occupation in life, and connections
with the learned. What, then, should be said of
Messrs. Exshaw, Wilson, and Saunders, booksellers in
Dublin, and perpetrators of this vile act of piracy?
They should all be expelled from the Republic of
Letters as literary Goths and Vandals, who are ready
to invade the property of every man of genius. Had
the Sosii, who were booksellers in Rome, been guilty
of such sordid dealings, I am persuaded they would
have been mentioned with infamy by Horace ; and it
is recent in everybody's memory that Curll under-
went many severe corrections for conduct of the same
nature."

Samuel Richardson died in 1761, at the age of
seventy-two. He was twice married. His second
wife survived him about a year. His will presents a
singular example of the ruling passion. He left to
numerous friends, male and female, the customary

CHAP. VI. SAMUEL RICHARDSON. 153

tribute of a mourning ring. He adds to these be-
quests, " Had I given rings to all the ladies who have
honoured me with their correspondence, and whom I
sincerely venerate for their amiable qualities, it
would, even in this last solemn act, appear like osten-
tation." He was of a far higher cast of character
than the diverting coxcomb Master Kobert Laneham,
Gentleman Usher to Queen Elizabeth, but he might
say with him, "Always among the Gentlewomen by
my good will ; Oh, you know, that comes always of a
gentle spirit."

154 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. VII.

CHAPTER VII.

WILLIAM HUTTOX.

OUT HEY, in his 'Commonplace Book,'
writing of manners and literature in the
time of Queen Anne, says, "Booksellers'
shops in the provincial towns of England
were very rare." I have already pointed out some
indications of this fact, illustrated in the Life of
Thomas Gent. Southey's statement is made upon
the authority of Boswell, in reference to the dealings
of the father of Samuel Johnson. The passages
referred to are as follows : " His father was Michael
Johnson, a native of Derbyshire, of obscure extraction,
who settled in Lichfield as a bookseller and stationer.
. . . . Michael was forced by the narrowness of
his circumstances to be very diligent in business, not
only in his shop but by continually resorting to
several towns in the neighbourhood, many of which
were a considerable distance from Lichfield." As
an instance of the rarity of the shops of country book-
sellers, Boswell goes on to say, " There was not one
even in Birmingham, in which poor old Mr. Johnson
used to open a shop every market day." There is a
touching passage in a letter written in his 76th year
by the son of the old bookseller, which shows how
habitual was this practice in his "father's time, and

CHAP. VII. WILLIAM HUTTOX. 155

how it seemed in another generation to be thought
degrading : " To Mr. Henry White, a young clergy-
man, with whom he now formed an intimacy, so as to
talk to him with great freedom, he mentioned that
he could not in general accuse himself of having been
an undutiful son. ' Once, indeed,' said he, ' I was
disobedient; I refused to attend my father to Ut-
toxeter market. Pride was the source of that refusal,
and the remembrance of it was painful. A few years
ago I desired to atone for this fault. I went to
Uttoxeter in very bad weather, and stood for a con-
siderable time bareheaded in the rain, on the spot
where my father's stall used to stand. In contrition
I stood, and I hope the penance was expiatory.' "

Samuel Johnson made his first acquaintance with
publishers in that town of Birmingham where his
father had kept a book-stall. Boswell records that,
at the age of twenty-four, the poor student, who had
just lost his father, went to pass some time with Mr.

•/ J.

Hector, a surgeon, who lodged and boarded at the
house of a bookseller : " Mr. Warren was the first
established bookseller in Birmingham, and was very
attentive to Johnson, who he soon found could be of
much service to him in his trade by his knowledge
of literature ; and he even obtained the assistance of
his pen in furnishing some numbers of a periodical
essay, printed in the newspaper of which Warren
was proprietor."

Before I follow Samuel Johnson into the great
bookselling world of London, let me glance at one or
two of the country booksellers who are not wholly

156 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. VII.

forgotten, though their sphere was confined, like that
of old Michael Johnson.

In 1730 a poor boy, seven years of age, was put to
work in the one silk mill at Derby. I see the shadow
of this little fellow, so diminutive that a pair of pattens
is tied upon his feet that he may be able to work at
the engine. The brutal superintendent canes him
mercilessly. The hours of labour require him to rise
at five every morning, summer and winter. He is
half-starved by his harsh father, a drunken wool-
comber. He has no time for the improvement of
his mind, and had very early conceived a distaste for
learning; for two years before the tyranny of the
mill his schoolmaster would beat his head against the
wall, holding it by the hair, so that he hated all books
except those of pictures. In 1801, dedicating his
' History of the Koman Wall ' to Mr. John Nichols,
he says, " You will pardon the errors of the work, for
you know I was not bred to letters, but that the Bat-
tledore, at an age not exceeding six, was the last book
I used at school." The Battledore was the successor
of the more primitive Horn-book. For two years the
undersized boy escaped the common accidents of
badly-fenced machinery ; but he then nearly lost his
hand, which was caught in the cogs of an engine, and,
to balance the providential saving of life and limb,
his father broke his walking-stick over his bony back.
In another year his mother died. His father gave up
housekeeping, spent the money which his goods sold
for, and went into lodgings, leaving the unhappy boy
to the care of strangers, by whom he was half-starved.

CHAP. VII. WILLIAM HUTTQN. 157

I have often looked upon the famous silk-mill of Sir
Thomas Lombe, standing upon a swampy island of
the river Derwent ; but it was ever associated in my
mind with the early miseries of William Hutton —
miseries which were the common lot of all factory
children, until, a hundred years after, the Legislature
thought it might be as well, amidst their solicitude
for the slaves of the West Indies, to pay a little atten-
tion to the slavery of factory children, overworked,
untaught, given up, as Hutton describes his own lot,
to be " the constant companions of the most rude and
vulgar of the human race — never taught by nature,
and never wishing to be taught." During the pro-
gress of a century there had been sufficient improve-
ment, even before the Factory Act, to prevent such
occurrences as one which this boy describes as the
experience of the fifth year of his apprenticeship :
" I was now turned twelve. Life began to open. My
situation at the mill was very unfavourable. Richard
Porter, my master, had made a wound in my back
with his cane. It grew worse. In a succeeding
punishment the point of his cane struck the wound,
which brought it into such a state that a mortification
was apprehended. My father was advised to bathe
me in Keddleston water. A cure was effected, and I
yet carry the scar." He now obtained a little instruc-
tion from an old woman who had been a school-
mistress ; but there was no relaxation from his labour
in the mill except on one occasion, when an unusually
dry summer had so lowered the water in the Derwent,
that the one wheel, which set in motion the machinery
for making the organzine silk, could not work. The

158 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. VII.

silk-throwing mills of Derby, after the days of Watt,
were equally independent of the heats of summer or
the frosts of winter.

The seven years servitude in the mill at Derby was
followed by a harder service. William was appren-
ticed to his uncle, a stocking-maker at Nottingham.
He was again half-starved, not from the necessities
of the family, but from their parsimoniousness. He
had no clothes to wear, for he was required to earn a
certain sum weekly for his task-master. It was four
years before he could save enough money by over-
work to buy a decent suit of clothes. At length, after
a severe beating, he ran away. What were the
troubles he had to encounter during this rash venture
into the outer world it is unnecessary to recount
But his description of his feelings upon entering Bir-
mingham, as contrasted with his future prosperity in
that town, is deeply interesting : " I sat down to rest
upon the north side of the Old Cross, near Philip
Street, the poorest of all the poor belonging to that
great parish, of which, twenty-seven years after, I
should be overseer. I sat under that roof, a silent
oppressed object, where, thirty-one years after, I
should sit to determine differences between man and
man." It did not occur to his thoughts, he says, that
nine years after he first entered Birmingham he should
become a resident there, and thirty-nine years after
should write its history. At this crisis of the young
stockinger's life he could obtain no employment; and
was reluctantly compelled to return to his uncle's
roof, where he continued till his term of apprentice-
ship was at an end in 1744. He remained for two

CHAP. VII. WILLIAM HUTTON. 159

years more to work with his uncle as a journeyman ;
but during this period a love of reading, and a taste
for music, had been developed in him. He bought
old books, and having some mechanical ingenuity, he
resolved to bind his tattered collection. Hencefor-
ward we see the shadow of William Hutton as book-
binder, bookseller, and stationer. His story, so well
told by himself, opens many interesting aspects of a
youth, under every disadvantage of poverty and igno-
rance, building up a lucrative trade, at a period when
country booksellers were few; by patient industry
reaching a comparatively high position in social life ;
and, having obtained a competence, devoting his latter
years to literary labours — requiring, indeed, no great
amount of genius, but, with his good sense, inquiring
spirit, and perseverance, calculated to give him an
honourable reputation in his own day, and not to be
without their value to the students of other genera-
tions.

Hutton began, his bookbinding operations by cob-
bling up three volumes of ' The Gentleman's Maga-
zine,' which constituted his first purchase. He could
only " raise books of small value," he informs us, and
these in worn-out bindings. He bought the refuse
stock of a poor bookseller in Nottingham, who was
also a binder, and watched him at his work. He
soon learnt to bind in a workmanlike manner : " The
first book I bound was a very small one, Shakspere's
' Venus and Adonis.' I showed it to the bookseller.
He seemed surprised. I could see jealousy in his
eye." ' Venus and Adonis ! ' Ah ! William Hutton,
if you had known the value of those twenty-seven

160 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. VII.

leaves ! All the separate editions of ' Venus and
Adonis' are of great rarity. Hutton, whose tastes
made him a book-reader instead of a collector of rare
books, has no raptures about such an acquisition.
The refuse of the poor bookseller was probably rich
in some of those chap-books, then so common, but
which are now amongst the choicest treasures of the
bibliomaniac. When, a year or two later, he opened
a shop at Southwell on market days, he furnished it
with about two hundred weight of what he calls
" trash." One would like to have a Catalogue of that
"trash." His small experience would little qualify
him to penetrate the mysteries of book-dealing. Even
a contemporary of Hutton, Mr. Flockton, of Canter-
bury, a man of some bibliographical knowledge, was
termed in the palmy days of the great collectors " the
ignorant bookseller," because he had sold for two
shillings the play of ' Dido, Queen of Carthage,' for a
copy of which Malone paid sixteen guineas. Hutton,
I fear, in his early time would have known as little
about black-letter rarities as the sailor, who, when he
saw John Katcliffe, a famous collector of the last
century, rushing frantically about as his goods were
carried out into the street whilst a neighbouring house
was on fire, and heard the portly gentleman exclaim,
" O my precious Caxtons ! " produced two full-curled
periwigs, with " Lord bless you, Sir, here they are,
quite safe ! "

In 1746 the uncle of William Hutton died, leaving
him the inheritance of a stocking-frame. The young
man could make stockings, but he could not sell
them. Despairing of pursuing the trade to which

CHAP. VII. WILLIAM BUTTON. 161

he had been apprenticed, with any chance of obtaining
bread, he resolved upon adopting bookbinding as the
means of living. But he had no proper tools, especially
those which were required for lettering and gilding.
He must go to London to buy them. A sister, who
had upheld him in his struggles, raised three guineas
for his use ; sewed them in the collar of his shirt ;
and put eleven shillings in his pocket for his travelling
expenses. He was three days walking on the road,
and at length rested his blistered feet at a carrier's
inn in Smithfield. Here he indulged in the luxury
of a supper, the only rneal he took under a roof
during his visit to London. " If a man," he says,
" has any money, he will see stalls enough in London
which will supply him with something to eat." Thus
he breakfasted upon furmity at a wheelbarrow, and
sometimes had a halfpennyworth of soup and another
of bread. He bought his gilding tools, his leather,
his boards, and his three alphabets of letters, and
thus transacted all his business. But the inquiring
spirit which prompted him in his old age to walk
the whole length of the Roman wall, and to note
every peculiarity of Bosworth Field with the true
historical mind, led him to visit all the curiosities of
London that he could see for nothing. One penny
to see Bedlam was all he spent. The Houses of
Parliament were sitting. " As I had always applied
deification to great men, I was surprised to see a
hawker cram her twopenny pamphlet into a member's
face, and that he, instead of caning her, took not
the least notice." This twopenny pamphlet appears
to have been the only article connected with his
future pursuits which attracted his notice. He stayed

M

162 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. VII.

three days in London, but he has not a word to say
about booksellers or their shops ; which might pro-
bably have been more accessible to him than the
Tower, where the wardens prevented his entrance,
conjecturing that he had no money to pay for sight-
seeing. And so our northern adventurer trudged
home from the south with four shillings in his pocket
out of the eleven which he had brought to the
capital, and took back fourpence to Nottingham,
having been absent nine days.

William Hutton had now to look out for a fitting
place in which to exercise his new vocation. Ever
cautious, he would not make too great a venture
at the first starting. He took a shop at Southwell,
fourteen miles from Nottingham, paying for its use
twenty shillings a year. Here he deposited his
stock of tattered volumes, and " in one day became
the most eminent bookseller in Southwell." He was
not, however, a resident in this little town, now
better known than it was a century ago by being
the scene of the first sensible experiment in the
administration of the Poor Laws. The resolute and
prudent man thus describes his course of life during
a rainy winter : " I set out from Nottingham at five
every Saturday morning, carried a burthen of from
three to thirty pounds weight to Southwell, opened
shop at ten, starved in it all day upon bread, cheese,
and half a pint of ale ; took from Is. to 6s., shut up
at four, and by trudging through the solitary night
and the deep roads five hours more, I arrived at
Nottingham by nine, where I always found a mess
of milk porridge by the fire, prepared by my valuable
sister." But as might be expected, the labour of

CHAP. VII. WILLIAM HUTTON. . 163

such a life was great and the profit small. In 1750,
therefore, he made a journey to Birmingham, where
he found that three booksellers were thriving. One
of these, Mr. Warren, I have mentioned as having
been associated with the early literary efforts of
Samuel Johnson. He was one of three mentioned
by Button as the "great men" of that active,
prosperous, and intelligent community. He thought,
however, that there might be room for a fourth in a
small way. His way was, indeed, a small one. He
agreed to pay a shilling a week for the rent of half
a very little shop. His stock was not an expensive
one. Upon the invitation of a dissenting minister,
with whom his sister had once lived as a servant,
he walked to Gainsborough, and there purchased of
his sister's old master a lot of books at his own price.
He estimates their weight at two hundred pounds,
and he pays for them by the following note: "I
promise to pay to Ambrose Rudsall one pound seven
shillings when I am able."

It is difficult to imagine a more forlorn condition
of life than that of William Hutton as he sat amongst
his old books, looking in vain for customers. There
was not a face that he knew in this populous town.
He was separated from his sister. He saw little
hope of making his way in the world without money
and without friends. But gradually two or three
young men came to know the intelligent bookseller,
and to talk with him upon subjects something higher
than those belonging to an ordinary retail trade.
A popular demand for literature was growing up.
The dealer in second-hand books had odd volumes of
poets and essayists to tempt the youth who had a

M2

164 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLEES. CHAP. VII.

sixpence or a shilling to lay out; and if Hutton
could purchase any books of greater value, he could
smarten them up by his skill in binding. By the
most rigid economy he found himself at the end of
the first year twenty pounds better than when he
began business. He felt that he was at the begin-
ning of a prosperous career. But suddenly there
arose a dark cloud which threatened to shut out all
the sunshine of his hopes. There were official tyrants
a hundred and fifteen years ago, who have continued
to exist up to this very time, although their power
of injury has been gradually diminishing. He has
described this crisis, in which the fortunes of one of
the greatest benefactors of Birmingham were very
nearly wrecked: "The overseers, fearful I should
become chargeable to the parish, examined me with
regard to my settlement, and, with a voice of autho-
rity, ordered me to procure a certificate, or they
would remove me from the town. Terrified, I wrote
to my father, who returned for answer, ' that All
Saints, in .Derby, never granted certificates.' I was
hunted by ill-nature two years. I repeatedly offered
to pay the levies (rates), which was refused. A
succeeding overseer, a draper, of whom I had pur-
chased two suits of clothes, value 10Z., consented to
take them. The scruple exhibited a short sight, a
narrow principle, and the exultation of power over
the defenceless." The adroit purchase of two suits
of clothes from the draper in office was an unquestion-
able assurance of William Button's " respectability."
The next year he took a better shop and a dwelling-
house. He had now a prosperous trade, and read
the signs of the times aright when he set up the

CHAP. VII. WILLIAM BUTTON. 165

first Circulating Library established in Birmingham.
This new mode of diffusing knowledge appears to
have travelled very quickly from London to the
country, for the first circulating library in the metro-
polis was established in the Strand in 1740, by a
bookseller of the name of Bathoe.* Let me deviate
a little from tracing Hutton's career, to call attention
to that of a bookseller who presided over a circulating
library of a very different character to that which
became an attraction to the ladies of Birmingham.
" As I hired out books," says Hutton, " the fair sex
did not neglect the shop. Some of them were so
obliging as to show an inclination to share with me
the troubles of the world." John Nicholson, of
Cambridge, had for five-and-forty years another order
of customers.

In the staircase of the public library at Cambridge
hangs a portrait painted by Reinagle, and under-
neath it an engraving with the inscription, "John
Nicholson, Mappesiana Bibliotheca Cantab." Some
visitor might ask how it is that a man who is handed
down to posterity with attributes so essentially dif-
ferent from illustrious Dons, gracing many a college
wall, but whom posterity has agreed to forget — how
it is that an elderly man of a shrewd countenance,
in a wig and cocked hat, with buckles in his shoes
and a heavy load of books in his hands, should be
honoured with a place even in the approach to the
University library. Still more would the visitor be
surprised if a smaller print of the same old book-
seller were also here exhibited, in which he is repre-

* Cunningham's ' Handbook of London.'

1 66 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. VII.

sented bearing a similar burden in one hand, but
knocking at a college door with the other. Here
the inscription is, " MAPS ! Anything wanted to-day,
Sir ? Fungar vice BibliotJiecce, quce alias scientes reddere
valebit, ipsa exors sciendi" This smaller print was
published in 1796, the year in which Nicholson died.
The common name by which this benefactor to
learning was known in the University was " Maps
or Pictures." He would carry about these articles
from college to college ; and it certainly was well that
the walls of the students' chambers should be covered
with something more significant of classical or sacred
studies than the coloured representation of the last
winner of the Derby, of the attitudes of the first
figurante of the ballet, or the grim portrait of the Cham-
pion of England. But John Nicholson was a bene-
factor to learning of a higher class than that of a mere
vender of maps and pictures. He was a successor
of Robert Watts, who first established a circulating
library in Cambridge in 1745. His library comprised
a large stock of maps and prints, from which circum-
stance he first obtained the name of " Maps," which
Nicholson inherited. During the forty-five years
in which he pursued his business at Cambridge,
there were probably as many poor students as rich
ones, and to those of small means, the circulating
library of Nicholson was an immense advantage. It
included most of the lecture books used in the Uni-
versity. Within the last few years the opening of
scholarships, and the establishment of new ones to be
competed for, have attracted many to the Universities
who could not have gone thither without such help.
But the size and price of text-books, and of all other

CHAP. VII. WILLIAM HUTTON. 167

books, are now essentially different from those of
the time when the sale of the best standard works
was very limited at Cambridge, and they were hired
by all classes of students. At the present time the
cost of books absolutely necessary for the student
may be counted by shillings. Elementary education
now embraces subjects much higher than those treated
in the old class of school-books, and the sale of works
for the school and college student is greatly extended,
bringing with this extension a proportionate cheap-
ness. Thus, such books can now be bought for less
than the hire used to cost in the last century.
Nicholson's charge to his subscribers was ten
shillings a term, for which a man could have ten
books. But Nicholson's library was also rich in
the best editions of the Classics. Standard works
of English literature were there in abundance. To
many an under-graduate, who was not allowed
to take books away from college libraries, it was an
invaluable benefit to have the means of study in his
own rooms. We, of the present day, can scarcely
estimate to what extent John Nicholson may have
been the humble means of adding some distinguished
names to the roll of Cambridge scholarship, and of
saving the University from the indignant satire of
Cowper, applied to the period when our old book-
seller flourished : —

" The schools became a scene
Of solemn farce, where Ignorance in stilts,
His cap well lined with logic not his own,
With parrot tongue perlbrm'd the scholar's part,
Proceeding soon a graduated dunce.

168 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. VII.

Then compromise had place, and scrutiny
Became stone-blind, precedence went in track,
And he was competent whose purse was so." *

Button's Circulating Library at Birmingham con-
tributed, probably, little to his accumulation of
wealth. But he had a friend, in 1753, who was more
valuable to him, in the character of a papermaker,
than in that of a writer of popular novels. It was a
lucky hour which brought William Hutton acquainted
with Kobert Bage. There are few of the present
generation who ever heard of the once famous novels
of ' Man as he is,' and ' Man as he is not.' I
remember to have read them with great interest, but
I have not now the slightest recollection of their cha-
racters or their plots. Bage commenced his career
of authorship in 1781, with 'Mount Keneth,' a
novel. Hutton wrote an account of his friend's life,
when he died in 1801. They had known each other
sixty years, for Bage was a native of Derbyshire.
They had become friends from a time just before their
business connexion, when the thriving papermaker
proposed to the struggling bookseller that he should
devote a portion of his small house to a business of
greater returns and more profit than that of second-
hand books and a circulating library. Hutton had
some ready money, and preferred purchasing paper
of the maker to selling it upon commission. He
hung out a sign, " The Paper Warehouse." He tells
us the result in a few words : " From this small hint
I followed the stroke forty years, and acquired an
ample fortune."

* ' The Task,' B. II.

CHAP. VII. WILLIAM BUTTON. 169

The shadow of William Hutton, as the " old book-
seller," presents itself to me no longer. He was
too fond of money to accumulate scarce books with
the ardour of a Collector, like some of his bookselling
contemporaries, whose enthusiasm has been recorded
by Dr. Dibdin. Thomas Miller, of Bungay, for example,
in 1755 " set himself up in the character of grocer
and bookseller," and mixed the sweets of learning with
the fragrance of sugar and spices. I see in Hutton
a prosperous tradesman, happily married. I see an
important public functionary, exercising with a vigi-
lance and sagacity that a County Court judge might
emulate, the duties of a Commissioner of the Bir-
mingham Court of Requests. I see a Fellow of the
Society of Antiquaries, devoting his old age to investi-
gations that might appear to be only possible to be
successfully carried through by the vigour of youth.
His numerous writings might seem to be the result
of the labour of a lifetime, instead of being the pro-
ductions of one who first took pen in hand, for the
purpose of publication, when he was in his fifty-
seventh year. Devoting himself to literary pursuits,
he had the misfortune to lose a valuable library in
the Church and King riots of 1791, and the greater
misery of beholding the health of his beloved wife
irretrievably shattered, in the alarm she felt during
those brutal riots, when his country-house at Bennett's
Hill was set on fire and burnt down. In 1792 he
wrote to Mr. Nichols : " The late unhappy affair has
thrown me off every bias. I had made a considerable
progress in the Antiquities of Verulam, and with
great pleasure to myself. But the manuscript was

170 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. VII.

destroyed, and, till matters are settled, I am not
certain whether I dare resume it. I long for that
tranquil life which I have lost, — a life of still pursuit,
that neither injures nor is injured." But the tranquil
life and the tranquil mind soon returned. From
early years he had been a dabbler in verse, and
continued to write what, by courtesy, were called
• Poems.' Some of his labours were of more per-
manent value. His 'History of the Eoman Wall'
presents a remarkable example of his enthusiasm at
an advanced age. In his Introduction to this book
he says, "Perhaps I am the first man that ever
travelled the whole length of this Wall, and probably
the last that ever will attempt it. Who then will
say, he has, like me, travelled it twice ? Old people
are much inclined to accuse youth of their follies ;
but on this head silence will become me, lest I
should be asked, ' What can exceed the folly of that
man, who, at seventy-eight, walked six hundred miles
to see a shattered Wall!'" Such zeal and per-
severance did not show " the folly of the man." Nor
was it folly in him, in his seventy-fifth year, to write
his life, which was published by his daughter Cathe-
rine, after his death in 1815, at the great age of
ninety-two. Of this interesting book I published an
abstract in 'The Penny Magazine' of 1836. This
brought to me a present of a silk purse netted by
herself, with a letter, which shows how the daughter,
at fourscore, preserved the active mind and indus-
trious habits of the father. Several years later this
venerable lady edited for me a republication of ' The
Life of William Hutton, written by himself.'

CHAP. VIII. EDWARD CAVE; RALPH GRIFFITHS. 171

CHAPTER VIII.

EDWARD CAVE ; RALPH GRIFFITHS.

F Samuel Johnson were the Jupiter of Lite-
rature during fifty years of the eighteenth
century, the booksellers of that period,
with whom he had familiar intercourse,
literary and social, were his satellites. Far " less
than Jove," they had a light of their own, which
may guide me a little onward in my voyage through
those occasionally obscure regions. ' The brightest
of them are double the number of the attendant
stars of the king of planets. There are half a score
more of minor lights in the inky way. But I see
the great luminary in constant association with his
chief satellites ; in their front shops, in their back
shops, in their parlours beyond the shop, in their
dining-rooms and drawing-rooms, and sometimes
receiving homage in his own residence, whether
in Gough Square, Staple's Inn, Gray's Inn, Inner
Temple, Johnson Court, or Bolt Court. I shall
occasionally glance at their shadows as they flit by
me in the pages of the most amusing of biographers.
Some of the most eminent of the old booksellers,
after the days of Pope to those of Cowper, belong
to the period which may be justly called the John-
sonian era.

172 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. VIII.

Early in the eighteenth century there was a boy
of marked ability in the endowed grammar-school
of Rugby, who was the son of a shoemaker in that
town. Edward Cave had probably to endure much
contumely from his richer companions. A London
shopkeeper had founded Rugby school ; but never-
theless the presence of the son of one who mended
shoes close by the school-gate — one of the " rude
mechanicals who work for bread" — was a blot upon
the dignity of the foundation. The clever and dili-
gent boy had of course a nickname. In his pros-
perous latter years he used to travel on horseback,
and had relays of horses at his command. Arriving
at the house of an old schoolfellow of county dis-
tinction, he desired the servant to say that "Ned
Cave, the cobbler, was come to visit him." There
is a monument in the churchyard of Rugby, the
inscription on which, written by Hawkesworth, records
that "Edward Cave, without interest, fortune, or
connexion, by the native power of his own genius,
assisted only by a classical education, which he re-
ceived in the grammar-school of this town, planned,
executed, and established a literary work, called the
Gentleman's Magazine." In his life, written by
Johnson, it is recorded — not much to the honour of
the Rev. Mr. Holyock, " to whose care most of the
neighbouring families, even of the highest rank,
entrusted their sons," — that Cave had to bear the
burden of the unlucky pranks of boys, "far above
him in rank and expectations ;" and that he was
" oppressed with unreasonable tasks, that there might
be an opportunity of quarrelling with his failure."

CHAP. VIII. EDWARD CAVE; RALPH GRIFFITHS. 173

The despised " Cave, the cobbler," according to
Johnson, " bore this persecution for a while, and
then left the school, and the hope of a literary edu-
cation, to seek some other means of gaining a liveli-
hood." If the feeble and tyrannical pedagogues who
presided over grammar-schools after the Revolution,
and during the Georgian era, " hated not learning
worse than toad or asp," and especially hated the
almost impossible union of learning and poverty, it
is satisfactory to know that whilst Rugby had its
Holyock in the reign of Anne, it had its Arnold in
the reign of Victoria. A different spirit now pre-
vails in all public schools from that which shut
out young Cave from reaching the eminence which
his schoolmaster first designed for him. "He was
so well pleased with his quick progress in the school,
that he declared his resolution to breed him for
the University, and recommend him as a servitor to
some of his scholars of high rank." This sentence
of Cave's biography would seem to imply that a
servitor was something akin to the lacquey of an
individual master. Johnson, the lexicographer, de-
fines servitor, " one of the lowest order in the Uni-
versity." Perhaps, from either condition, the shoe-
maker's son had a lucky escape.

Young Cave's endeavours " to seek other means
of getting his livelihood " first made him clerk to a
collector of excise, and afterwards an apprentice,
upon liking, to a timber merchant. He finally found
a congenial position with Mr. Collins, a printer in
the city of London, who is described by Dunton as
" a composition made up of justice and industry, a

174 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. VIII.

sincere friend, and so expeditious in despatch of
business, that he printed some sheets for me in ten
days that some others did in twenty." Johnson says,
rather slily, with reference to printers of his own
time, "this was a trade for which men -were formerly
qualified by a literary education, and which was
pleasing to Cave, because it furnished some employ-
ment for his scholastic attainments." His master
having discovered his value, he was sent to Norwich
to conduct a weekly paper. Here he obtained some
reputation as a writer. Mr. Collins having died
before Cave's apprenticeship was expired, he got
employment with Mr. Barber, the favourite Tory
printer. He was now married ; was a contributor
to ' Mist's Journal,' and finally obtained a situation
in the Post-office. Here he was promoted to the
office of Clerk of the Franks. In this capacity he
got into disgrace with members of Parliament, by
stopping franks which were given by them to their
friends, being, as he thought, an illegal extension of
their privilege. Having been cited before the House
of Commons, and accused, " as I suppose very un-
justly," says Johnson, of opening letters, he was
dismissed from his situation. Eventually he pur-
chased a small printing-office. Henceforth "St.
•John's Gate," where this business was conducted,
was to be famous. Here, on the 1st of January,
1731, he set up ' The Gentleman's Magazine.' One
of the chief objects of this miscellany was to present
news in a condensed form. The prospectus says,
" Newspapers are of late so multiplied as to render
it impossible, unless a man makes it his business,

CHAP. VIII. ED WARD CAVE; EALPH GRIFFITHS. 175

to consult them all so that they are become

the chief channels of amusement and instruction.

Two hundred half-sheets per month are

thrown upon the press only in London, and as many
in the country." There were also "divers written
accounts." The trade of writing news-letters had
been plied vigorously by Cave when he was a clerk
in the Post-office. He came as a practised hand to
deal with the journalizing staple of his magazine ;
but it was his good fortune to raise it into a higher
sphere of literature, and to make it a more effectual
instrument of diffusing political intelligence than had
been ever before attempted. To the courage and
perseverance of Edward Cave we chiefly owe "the
present publicity of the doings of our rulers, which,
instead of shaking, as it was once feared that it
would, has, without doubt, increased the stability of
our constitution." * It was in 1736 that Cave deter-
mined to put in practice his favourite scheme of in-
serting a regular series of Parliamentary Debates in
the 'Gentleman's Magazine.' His mode of pro-
ceeding is described by Sir John Hawkins. I see
the shadow of the adroit printer, not easily conceal-
ing his large body, in some dark corner of the House
of Commons ; now and then venturing .to bring out
a note-book ; picking up information from members
in the lobby; adjourning to a tavern with one or
two of his agents, who had been similarly employed ;
making something like a connected series of their
memoranda ; and, finally, handing them over to some

* Andrews' ' History of British Journalism,' vol. i. p. 142.

176 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. VIII.

man of letters to dress up. But these reports were
not published till the close of each session, and then
only with the initials of the speakers. After this
fearful abuse of privilege had passed unnoticed for
two years, the House awoke to the indignity of being
reported by " fellows who thrust themselves into our
gallery," and dreaded that the time would come
when the speeches of the House would be every day
printed, even during the session. It having been
resolved that the House would proceed with the
utmost severity against all such offenders, Cave
evaded the costly penalties of commitment, by pub-
lishing ' Debates in the Senate of Great Lilliput.' The
letters forming the names of the speakers were trans-
posed or changed in these reports, after the fashion that
compositors call pie. Thus Walpole became "Wal-
clup," and Bathurst " Brustalk." Johnson succeeded
to the office of rendering these debates famous by
his eloquence, knowing little more than the names
of the speakers, the subjects of discussion, and the
general course of the argument. He was never,
he said, in the gallery of the House of Commons
but once.

In 1734 Cave offered a prize of fifty pounds for
the best poem on ' Life, Death, Judgment, Heaven
and Hell.' Johnson, in his life of the enterprising
publisher of 'The Gentleman's Magazine,' says,
" Being but newly acquainted with wealth, and think-
ing the influence of fifty pounds extremely great, he
expected the first authors of the kingdom to appear
as competitors, and offered the allotment of the prize
to the Universities. But when the time came, no

CHAP. VIII. EDWARD CAVE ; RALPH GRIFFITHS. 177

name was seen among the writers that had been ever
seen before. The Universities, and several private
men, rejected the province of assigning the prize."
The prize-system long subsisted as a temptation to
juvenile emulation, and eventually assumed its most
ridiculous shape when working-men were to be
encouraged to write the best novel, of which the
principal judge was to be an ex-Lord-Chancellor.
The discreet Peer followed the precedent of the
Universities; and left to a friend, who had incau-
tiously consented to be one of the judges, the task
(I use his own words) " of wading for days together
through hopeless trash." Johnson, in the extremity
of his indigence, does not appear to have been
tempted into the competition which Cave proposed.
He preferred to work upon his 'Irene' and his
' London,' to taking a ticket in Cave's lottery. Per-
haps he would rather have done what Wilcox the
bookseller recommended, when a gigantic figure,
with a huge face scarred by disease, rolled into his
shop, avowing his intention to get his living by
authorship. " You had better buy a porter's knot."
Wilcox, according to Johnson's own account, was
nevertheless one of his best friends. But it is at
St. John's Gate that we most frequently recognise
the poor scholar as seeking for a steady friend. Let
me look upon his shadow there ; not behind the screen
in Cave's dining-room, when he was ashamed to show
his ragged clothes, but in Cave's largest composing-
room, upon a more unusual occasion than that of
swallowing a hasty meal provided by his publisher.
Mr. Cave had often heard Mr. Johnson speak of

N

1 78 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. VIII.

the young gentleman who had been his pupil, and
had accompanied him to London in the spring of
1737. David Garrick had been entered of Lincoln's
Inn, but was little inclined towards the law. He had
attempted, in partnership with his brother, to pursue
a promising branch of trade, but soon abandoned the
undertaking, about which Foote made merry, when
he said that he remembered Garrick living in Durham
Yard, with three quarts of vinegar in his cellar,
calling himself a wine merchant. The young friend
of Johnson was scarcely of age, when Cave desired
to be a witness of his wonderful histrionic powers, of
which Johnson spoke. There had been no public
exhibition of his talents, when a private performance
was to take place in Cave's house, where the young
frequenter of the theatres was sometimes a guest.
The room over the great arch of St. John's Gate has
been cleared of its composing-frames. Half a dozen
copies of Fielding's farce of ' The Mock Doctor ' have
been put in the hands of Cave's journeymen, to read
the parts allotted to them. The room is lighted,
the company is seated, the compositors and pressmen
and devils are permitted a peep. Enter Gregory
with Dorcas, his wife. It is very soon seen that
young Davy has at least a genius for comedy, when
the faggot-maker describes his regular education,
first at the charity-school, and then as the pupil of
a physician, under the facetious denomination of a
Merry Andrew. Fielding was contented with doing
little more than translate Moliere's ' Medecin malgre
lui,' adapting it to English manners. Thus when
Garrick made the farce one of his stock-pieces,

CHAP. VJII. EDWARD CAVE; RALPH GRIFFITHS. 179

Gregory was as amusing as Sganarelle; and the
polite audiences that smiled decorously in the Palais
Royal, laughed outrageously in Goodman's Fields. So
laughed Johnson, so laughed Cave (although the wise
Sir John Hawkins says of him, "he had no great
relish for mirth, but he could bear it"), so laughed
the compositors, when Gregory, ascertaining that the
father of the afflicted lady, whose dumbness " pro-
ceeded from her having lost her speech," paraded
his learning, with little variation from Moliere :
" Cabricius arci thuram cathalimus, singulariter nom.
Haec musa hie, haec, hoc, genitivo hujus, hunc, hanc
musee. Bonus, bona, bonum. Estne oratio Latinus ?
Etiam. Quia substantive et adjectivum concordat in
generi numerum et casus sic dicunt, aiunt, prsedicant,
clamitant, et similibus." Garrick's performance in
St. John's Gate, the year before he first appeared
in a theatre at Ipswich, was doubtless a hit, and
Johnson would goodnaturedly rejoice that he had
been the means of giving pleasure to the bookseller.
Sir John Hawkins, who rarely condescends to any
mode of writing that can be called lively, has, in a
note to his ' Life of Johnson,' given a somewhat
amusing description of Cave's " good hands " in the
magazine. The most eminent of them was Mr.
Moses Browne, originally a pencutter, who carried
off the fifty pounds prize. " Being a person of a reli-
gious turn, he also published in verse a series of
devout contemplations, called 'Sunday Thoughts.'
Johnson, who often expressed his dislike of religious
poetry, and who, for the purpose of religious medita-
tion, seemed to think one day as proper as another,

N 2

180 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. VIII.

read them with cold disapprobation, and said, he
had a great mind to write and publish ' Monday
Thoughts.' " There was Mr. John Duick, also a pen-
cutter, who was another poetical contributor to the
magazine. There was also Mr. Foster Webb, a young
man educated in Mr. Watkins's academy in Spital
Square, who was famous as a writer of enigmas.
Mr. Watkins was fortunate in having had four other
literary pupils whose ambition had probably been
kindled by the modern reputation of the ancient
St. John's Gate. Sir John Hawkins speaks of all
these contributors with a patronising respect for
their abilities and acquirements, and then, with
reference to Cave, falls into his congenial vein of
dull sarcasm. " He was so incompetent a judge
of Johnson's abilities, that, meaning at one time to
dazzle him with the splendour of some of those
luminaries in literature who favoured him with their
correspondence, he told him that if he would, in the
evening, be at a certain ale-house in the neighbour-
hood of Clerkenwell, he might have a chance of
seeing Mr. Browne and another or two of the persons
mentioned in the preceding note. Johnson accepted
the invitation, and being introduced by Cave, dressed
in a loose horseman's coat, and such a great bushy
uncombed wig as he constantly wore, to the sight
of Mr. Browne, whom he found sitting at the upper
end of a long table, in a cloud of tobacco-smoke, had
his curiosity gratified." And why should not the
man, dressed in a loose horseman's coat and great
bushy uncombed wig, have been introduced to
Mr. Moses Browne and the other luminaries at the

CHAP. VIII. EDWARD GATE; RALPH GRIFFITHS. 181

ale-house in Clerk en well ? Johnson at that time
had obtained no public recognition of his talent
and learning. His ' London' was yet unpublished ; his
' Irene' was not yet acted ; he was not yet " deterre ; "
he was not yet accustomed to sit at good men's feasts,
or to occupy the foremost position at the Literary
Club. He took his natural place amongst the hacks
of a period when Grub-street was the everlasting
theme of contempt from the pens of those who were
born great or had achieved greatness. When he left
the illustrious society of the ale-house in Clerkenwell,
Mr. Cave might expect to hear that his new friend
might be a fine scholar, but he evidently was a
very poor one, and not altogether of the politest
manners.

Cave's project of a magazine received, as it is well
known, no encouragement from the booksellers of
tliat period. He had the sagacity to see that a new
class of readers had risen up to whom such a mis-
cellany would be a welcome addition to periodical
literature. The success was immediate, and it was
instantly followed by a host of rivals, the greater
number of which quickly perished. Johnson has
recorded that " only ' The London Magazine,' sup-
ported by a powerful association of booksellers, and
circulated with all the art and all the cunning of
trade, exempted itself from the general fate of Cave's
invaders, and obtained, though not an equal, yet a
considerable sale." Cave used to sell ten thousand
copies monthly ; but his attention to the conduct of
it was unremitting. "He scarcely ever looked out
of the window," said Johnson, " but with a view to

182 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. V1H.

its improvement." It was flourishing in 1754, when
its intelligent projector died. " One of the last acts
of reason he exerted was fondly to press the hand
that is now writing this little narrative." Such was
the public testimony of Johnson, when he had risen
into eminence as the essayist and lexicographer, of
his affection for the humble printer who had befriended
him in his days of poverty and neglect. Writing to
Mrs. Carter, two years after, he says, " Poor dear
Cave, I owed him much."

The first popular Review succeeded, after an in-
terval of eighteen years, the first popular Magazine.
'The Monthly Review' commenced in 1749. Ralph
Griffiths was not so original in his conception of a
literary miscellany as Edward Cave, for in 1683 there
was a 'Weekly Memento for the Ingenious, or an
Account of Books ;' and, in the year when the Prince
of Orange came to free the press from some of its
shackles, there was published ' Weekly Memorials ;
or, an Account of Books lately set forth ; with other
Accounts relating to Learning ; by Authority.' The
' History of the Works of the Learned,' which first
appeared in 1737, was essentially a popular Review.
David Hume says, in the account of his own life,
" Never literary attempt was more unfortunate than
my ' Treatise of Human Nature.' It fell dead-born
from the press, without reaching such distinction as
even to excite a murmur among the zealots." Upon
this statement Mr. Burton remarks, that Hume " was
never easily satisfied with the success of his works ;

CHAP. VIII. EDWARD CAVE ; RALPH GRIFFITHS. 183

and we know that this one was not so entirely unno-
ticed by the periodical press, such as it then was, but
that it called forth a long review in the number for
November, 1739, of 'The History of the Works of
the Learned,' a periodical which may be said to have
set the example in England of systematic reviews of
new books. This review is written with considerable
spirit, and has a few pretty powerful strokes of sar-*
casrn."* It would appear, from another quotation
which we must take the liberty of making from Mr.
Burton's excellent biography of Hume, that criticism,
at that period, was a somewhat dangerous pursuit lor
a bookseller to be concerned in. Mr. Burton thinks
that the anecdote which we subjoin is not in itself
incredible, but that it requires authentication.

Immediately after Hume's death there appeared in
' The London Review ' the following account of the
manner in which he had acknowledged the article
in 'The Works of the Learned:' — "It does not
appear our author had acquired at this period of his
life that command over his passions of which he
afterwards makes 4iis boast. His disappointment at
the public reception of his Essay on ' Human Nature '
had, indeed, a violent effect on his passions in a par-
ticular instance, it not having dropped so dead-born
from the press but that it was severely handled by
the reviewers of those times in a publication entitled
' The Works of the Learned.' A circumstance this
which so highly provoked our young philosopher,
that he flew in a violent rage to demand satisfaction

* Burton's ' Life of David Hume,' p. 108.

184 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. VIII.

of Jacob Robinson, the publisher, whom he kept,
during the paroxysm of his anger, at his sword's
point, trembling behind the counter, lest a period
should be put to the life of a sober critic by a raving
philosopher."*

Whether Mr. Ralph Griffiths ever trembled behind
his counter at the rage of an angry author, history
'records not. But no publisher of a review, no re-
viewer, ever received rougher handling from rival
critics, or has endured more obloquy in later times.
It is somewhat difficult to form a just estimate of the
character of a publisher, who, from the very nature of
his principal undertaking, was in a position to excite
a good deal of contemporary animosity. Nor is it
very easy to determine whether he was a successor of
the old race who paid needy writers the wretched
wages of their task- work, upon the principle by which
" sweating " tailors in our day have been said to accu-
mulate large fortunes. Ralph Griffiths, who estab-
lished the ' Monthly Review ' in 1749, chose for his
sign in St. Paul's Churchyard the enigmatical name
of 'The Dunciad.' Of course this was meant to
imply that the new Review was to be a terror to the
Dunces, just in the same way that a new critical
journal that came out of the North in October, 1802,
chose for its motto "Judez damnatur cum nocens
absolvitur" But when ' The Critical Review ' was set
up by Archibald Hamilton in 1756, the dunces were

* Jacob Robinson was a bookseller in Fleet-street. "Warburton
was a writer in ' The Works of the Learned ; ' and in that
publication he wrote the letters defending Pope's ' Essay on
Man,' from the strictures of M. de Crousaz.

CHAP. VIII. EDWARD CAVE; RALPH GRIFFITHS. 185

held to congregate under the old sign, which Griffiths
had removed to a new shop in Paternoster Row.
The ' Monthly Review ' was pronounced by its fierce
rival, 'The Critical' which Smollett conducted, to be
" written by a parcel of obscure hirelings, under the
restraint of a bookseller and his wife, who presume to
revise, alter, and amend, the articles occasionally." At
this time Goldsmith had been taken by Griffiths from
his occupation as an usher at Dr. Milner's school at
Peckham, to become a monthly reviewer, under an
agreement for a year that he was to receive board
and lodging in Griffiths' house, and to be paid in
addition a small salary. The most popular author of
the Johnsonian era, who was then in his twenty-ninth
year, had then published nothing which could give
the least notion of the peculiar charm of his writings,
or prove to the bookseller, who was experimenting
upon a new hand, that it would be said of him that
" he touched nothing which he did not adorn." Gold-
smith's life with Griffiths must, no doubt, have been
a hard and an unpleasant one ; ill-paid, and adding
very little to his reputation. But, as far as may be
judged from very imperfect records, reviewing at or
near the period when George III. came to the throne
was not a very profitable employment. Dr. Shebbeare,
a reviewer in the middle of the century, who was, no
doubt, paid highly in proportion to his power of saying
bitter things, was said to have received six guineas a
sheet. Johnson, in 1783, when the price of literary
labour had at least risen fifty per cent., doubted the
fact, and said, " Sir, he might get six guineas for a
particular sheet, but not communibus sheetibus"

186 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. VIII.

The articles contributed by Goldsmith from April
to September, 1757, are twelve in number. They
are reprinted in Mr. Cunningham's edition of Gold-
smith's works. There are four other articles by
Goldsmith contributed to Griffiths' Eeview in Decem-
ber, 1758. In the interval the reviewer had quitted
his employer, his garret, and his daily pittance. The
articles written for the Review by Goldsmith have
been ascertained from an inspection of Griffiths' own
marked copy of the * Monthly Review,' which is now
in the Bodleian Library. Including the extracts,
they occupy in the reprint only seventy pages. Grif-
fiths, it is said, accused Goldsmith of idleness.
" Nor," says Mr. Forster, " would the reproach
appear to be groundless, if the amount of his labour
for Griffiths were to be measured by those portions
only which have been traced; but this would be
simply absurd, for the mass of it undoubtedly has
perished."* That Griffiths was a hard task-master
we may conclude, without attempting to shew that
Goldsmith was a diligent and faithful performer of
the duties he had undertaken. But there is a letter
extant which sufficiently proves that the prosperous
bookseller was coarse-minded and unfeeling as re-
gards one who was

" In wit a man, simplicity a child."

But the publisher of 'The Monthly Review' must
have had higher qualities than those which fitted
him to be a slave-driver of hackney writers. Josiah
Wedgwood was his intimate friend, and writing to

* ' Life and Times of Oliver Goldsmith.' Ed. 1855, p. 78.

CHAP. VIII. EDWARD CAVE; RALPH GRIFFITHS. 187

his brother, in 1765, he says of this harsh man, who
might be supposed to be utterly unloveable, "You
know he hath one of the warmest places in my
heart."* Wedgwood also refers, more than once, to
" the dining-room at Turnham Green." In this villa
the bookseller, no doubt, gave better dinners than
Goldsmith was accustomed to eat over the shop in
Paternoster Row. Let me not dwell upon the shadow
of Ralph Griffiths, threatening his poor author with
a gaol, and calling him sharper and villain. Let me
trust that the relations between publisher and author
are now better understood, and that no struggling
man of genius will again have to write to a book-
seller in some such words as these : — " No, Sir, had
I been a sharper, had I been possessed of less good
nature and native generosity, I might surely now
have been in better circumstances. I am guilty I
own of meanness, which poverty unavoidably brings
with it ; my reflections are filled with repentance for
my imprudence, but not with any remorse for being
a villain ; that may be a character you unjustly
charge me with."

When Dr. Johnson had an audience of George III.
in 1767, the King " asked him if there were any other
literary journals published in this kingdom except
the Monthly and Critical Eeviews ; and on being
answered there was no other, His Majesty asked
whicli of them was the best : Johnson answered, that
the ' Monthly Review ' was done with most care, the
' Critical ' upon the best principles ; adding, that

* Miss Meteyard's ' Life of Wedgwood,' p. 186.

188 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. VIII.

the authors of the ' Monthly Review ' were enemies
to the Church. This the King said he was sorry to
hear." Impartiality from the very commencement
of popular reviews would have been a very doubtful
guarantee of success. They necessarily dealt with
party subjects, and adopted the tone of partisans.
And yet Johnson in 1776 said, talking of the Reviews,
" I think them very impartial." This is certainly
inconsistent with his statement that the Monthly
Reviewers are for pulling down all establishments,
and the Critical Reviewers are for supporting the
Constitution in Church and State. Their different
modes of accomplishing these feats may certainly
appear very curious to the uninitiated, but we have
had, and still have, many felicitous followers of the
earlier masters of the reviewing art. " The Critical
Reviewers, I believe, often review without reading
the books through; but lay hold of a topic, and
write chiefly from their own minds. The Monthly
Reviewers are duller men, and are glad to read the
books through."

The first of the magazines still lives, "a pros-
perous Gentleman," in the most select society. The
' Monthly Review ' dwindled into the grave as recently
as 1829. The * Critical ' completed its shorter term
of life in 1817. When Reynolds wondered that so
much good writing was employed in them, as the
authors were to remain unknown, Johnson had his
true commercial answer, " Nay, Sir, those who write
in them write well, in order to be paid well."

CHAP. IX. ROBERT DODSLEY. 189

CHAPTEE IX.

EGBERT DODSLEY.

N one of his forgotten Poems, this literary
Bookseller apostrophizes the famous dis-
trict in which he was bom —

" 0, native Sherwood ! happy were thy bard,
Might these his rural notes, to future time,
Boast of tall groves that, nodding o'er thy plain,
Rise to their tuneful melody."

It was not for him, he says, without " the lore of
Greece or Eome," to cherish such " vain presump-
tion."

.Robert Dodsley, born at Mansfield in 1703, is
supposed to have been the son of a humble school-
master of that town, and to have received his only
education under his father, who kept the Free-school.
His early history is very imperfectly known. He
was probably learning more out of doors than in his
dreary school - tasks. His poem of 'Agriculture,'
written in his fiftieth year, has some pleasing de-
scriptions, which manifest a poetical acquaintance
with rural life. His farce of ' The King and the
Miller of Mansfield ' was founded upon the tradition-
ary ballad with wliich his boyhood was familiar,

190 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. IX.

before Percy and Eitson had unlocked the black-
letter lore which showed how " merry Sherwood "
was peopled in the good old lawless days, when
honest yeomen made bold with the king's deer.
Boswell said that Eobert Dodsley's life should be
written, " as he had been so much connected with
the wits of the time, and by his literary merits had
raised himself from the station of a footman." The
author of * The Muse in Livery ' — a poem in some
respects autobiographical — might have begun earlier
in the history of his struggle upward, and have told
something like the same tale which William Hutton
has told of the miseries of an apprentice to a stock-
ing weaver. But Dodsley had evidently more ad-
vantages of education than the prosperous stationer
of Birmingham. His subsequent career was not
unfavourable to the literary culture of a youth of
observation and discretion. To Boswell's remark
that Dodsley's life should be written, Johnson re-
plied that his brother James would not thank a man
for such a performance; but he added, "Dodsley
himself was not unwilling that his original low con-
dition should be recollected. When Lord Lyttelton's
' Dialogues of the Dead ' came out, one of which is
between Apicius, an ancient epicure, and Dartineuf,
a modern epicure, Dodsley said to me, 'I knew
Dartineuf well, for I was once his footman.' " Dar-
tineuf died in 1737. In 1732 Dodsley's ' Muse in
Livery ' was published by subscription. Let me view
the Shadow of Eobert in plush breeches (not yellow
plush) as sketched by himself. I would place him
behind the chair of the modern epicure, the reputed

CHAP. IX. ROBERT DODSLEY. 191

son of Charles II., — "the man who knows every-
thing, and whom everybody knows," — were not the
footman's life which he describes more in accordance
with his position as servant to the Hon. Mrs. Lowther.
To that lady he dedicates ' The Muse in Livery.'

The emblematic frontispiece to this poem repre-
sents a young man with a handcuff of concentric
rings, labelled " Poverty " and " Ignorance." He has
wrenched the other hand out of its fetters, and points
to the sun as typical of his poetical aspirations. It
must be confessed that the pair of wings, which orna-
ment the liberated hand, would scarcely seem formed
for very high flights, if we may judge from the strains
in which he describes the first duties of the morning,
which are " cleaning glasses, knives, and plate." He
neglects not his own person —

" I clean my buckles, black my shoes,
Powder my wig, and brush my clothes."

Robert was certainly not in such a genteel service as
Fielding has described, in his survey of the ' Picture
of Dependence,' like a kind of ladder : — " Early in
the morning comes the postilion, or some other boy,
which great families, no more than great ships, are
without, and falls to brushing the clothes of John the
footman ; who, being dressed himself, applies his
hands to the same labour for Mr. Second-hand, the
squire's gentleman." I shall not attempt to follow
the author of ' The Muse in Livery ' through his labour
of parading before his lady's chair with a lighted
flambeau, nor in the diversions of the servants'-hall,
which are so distasteful to him.

192 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. IX.

One part of his daily duty appears to have been
congenial to the reflective footman ; the waiting at
dinner : —

" This is the only pleasant hour,
Which I have in the twenty-four ;
For whilst I unregarded stand,
With ready salver in ray hand,
And seem to understand no more
Than just what's called for out to pour,
I hear and mark the courtly phrases,
And all the elegance that passes."

Kobert was thus completing his education, and he
applied his talents to better purpose than following
the advice of Swift to the footman : — " Learn all the
new-fashion words, and oaths, and songs, and scraps
of plays that your memory can hold. Thus you will
become the delight of nine ladies in ten, and the
envy of ninety-nine beaux in a hundred." He was
not destined to " the highest of all indignities,"
according to the great satirist, "to grow old in the
office of a footman." He did not escape from this
fate, by obtaining a " place at court," or " a command
in the army," or " by going upon the road." He had
the footman's opportunities of frequenting the play-
house, and he could listen to the wit of the dinner-
table, when Dartineuf was host and Pope the guest.
He wrote 'The Toy Shop.' From the time when
Pope was induced to read the footman's dramatic
satire, and procured the lively piece to be acted,
Dodsley's fortune was changed. The great poet gave
him a more substantial patronage. "He assisted
Dodsley with a hundred pounds that he might open

CHAP. IX. ROBERT DODSLEY. 193

a shop." So Johnson briefly records an act of gene-
rosity on the part of one who " was accused of loving
money, but his love was eagerness to gain, not solici-
tude to keep it." It is to be assumed that the
friendly notice by Pope of the clever footman must
have been founded upon many opportunities of ob-
servation. The invalid is described as having been a
troublesome visitor at great houses. " His errands
were so frequent and frivolous, that the footmen in
time avoided and neglected him, and the Earl of
Oxford discharged some of the servants for their
resolute refusal of his messages." With his literary
tastes, our Kobert might have been more than usually
attentive to the greatest writer of his time ; and Pope,
with his accurate knowledge of human nature, might
have distinguished between the interested servility
of a menial, and the homage of a humble admirer.
Davies has recorded that, when the poet's servant
brought his master's scarlet cloak to the theatre,
Quin insisted upon the honour of putting it on him.
When the chair was waiting in the hall, for the
sickly guest to depart, there was one footman who
might have pressed forward to assist him, without
expecting to receive something more than his share
of the vails of his fellows.

In 1735 Robert Dodsley opened his shop in Pall
Mall. When the bookseller here set up Tully's head
over his door, the street does not appear to have had
any character as a seat of literature, and little as a
street of fashion. Marlborough House was shut in
by mean tenements, and here Old Sarah, the Duchess,
lived on, and received in 1740 a deputation from the

o

194 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. IX.

City, "sitting up in her bed." Schomberg House
was no longer a ducal residence, but was partly occu-
pied by a painter. Carlton House, which had been
transferred by the Countess Dowager of Burlington
to Frederick Prince of Wales, was under a process of
renovation and adornment, when Dodsley became the
neighbour of the father of George III. A century
was to elapse before Pall Mall was to be famous for
the splendour of its Club-houses. But in 1735 it had
its « Liberty, or Rump-Steak Club." Gibbon, in 1762,
enjoyed his evenings at the Cocoa Tree, with "twenty
or thirty, perhaps, of the first men of the kingdom in
point of fashion and fortune, supping at little tables
covered with a napkin, in the middle of a coffee-
room, upon a bit of cold meat or a sandwich, and
drinking a glass of punch." In spite of these associ-
ations with Pall Mall, it was not an exclusively
genteel quarter when Dodsley here made his first
commercial venture. The street was uupaved. The
amusements which it offered were few, in addition
to the usual bustle of St. James's on Court days.
In 1733, on an afternoon in October, to supply
the want of excitement, a race was run through the
length of this thoroughfare, by four women, for a
prize of a Holland smock, a cap, checked stockings
and laced shoes. So great was the attraction of
these Amazonian feats that the High-Constable
of Westminster, a resident in Pall Mall, afterwards
offered a prize of a laced hat to be run for by five
men. When Mr. Dodsley took up his station here
the magistrates had forbidden the repetition of such
amusements. The street was left to its pristine

CHAP. IX. ROBERT DODSLEY. 195

dulness. The cumbrous coach sometimes rolled
along ; and when the evening hour of visiting arrived,
the flambeau lighted up the gloom, when it was
carried before my lady's chair, as Robert, the footman,
had carried it a few years before. When some of
his old parti-coloured brethren lounged about the
street, after their due refection at the Star and
Garter, did they peep curiously into his shop, to see
how he looked behind his counter in plain broad
cloth, an unpowdered wig, and lace ruffles, and with
what an independent, yet modest air, he answered
the questions of some fashionable customer, who
treated him not as a lackey but as a gentleman ?

In the spring of 1738, a burly man was rolling
along the labyrinth of dirty streets and alleys that
then separated Oxford Market from Pall Mall, and
finally halted at Mr. Dodsley's shop. To the book-
seller he presented a note of introduction from
Mr. Cave. It was the busy time of day, and the
London season was then at its height ; so that
the proposition of Mr. Cave's friend to read to Mr.
Dodsley a poem which he drew out of his pocket
was courteously evaded. "If you will entrust the
manuscript to me I should prefer reading it at my
first leisure hour." "Well, Sir, you may be right,
I have a horror myself of being read to. My mind
always runs before the reader. I am too impatient,
Sir, of the slow process of listening. Yes, Sir, I will
leave it with you." The author calls again after a
few days. Mr. Dodsley has read the poem, and
thinks it a creditable thing to be concerned in.
Mr. Johnson has told the bookseller, as he had

o2

196 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. IX.

previously told the printer of St. John's Gate, that
he was at liberty to alter any stroke of satire in
this imitation of Juvenal that he might dislike.
Dodsley perhaps, had too high a respect for a poet's
art to be forward in making objections. He had
incurred some chance of danger, when, earlier in
the year, he had published Paul Whitehead's poem
of 'Manners,' regardless of the "fell harpy that
hovers o'er the press." Dodsley could see nothing
in ' London ' that could be deemed personal satire ;
so he agreed to Johnson's terms. " Paul Whitehead
had a little before got ten guineas for a poem, and I
would not take less than Paul Whitehead." On the
same morning of May that ' London ' was published
came out Pope's ' One Thousand Seven Hundred and
Thirty-eight, a Dialogue something like Horace.'
Tremendous was the power of this satire. Walpole
is dealt gently with ; but the great minister's slaves
are scourged mercilessly as they crowd round the
triumphal car of Vice, and

" Hear her black trumpet through the land proclaim,
That not to be corrupted is the shame."

Paul Whitehead had written, even before the pub-
lication of Pope's most daring satire —

" Pope writes unhurt — but know, 'tis different quite
To beard the lion, and to crush the mite."

But Whitehead had attacked one who was more
sensitive than a Prime Minister — an eloquent and
controversial bishop. Sherlock, then Bishop of
Salisbury, moved in the House of Lords, at the

CHAP. IX. ROBERT DODSLEY. 197

beginning of 1739, that Paul Whitehead should
bo called to the bar. The sagacious Paul had
absconded, and had left Dodsley to bear the punish-
ment due to such boldness as described the bishop
as " The learned Levite " whose earthly vote is sold ;
arid proclaimed that

" Henley's shop and Sherlock's are the same."

A vigorous opposition was made against the motion
to punish the bookseller, and he got off with a heavy
payment for fees. His friend Pope considered that
this proceeding was meant as a hint to himself.

Dodsley went steadily forward in drawing around
him at Pall Mall new friends, and he appears never
to have lost the confidence of old ones. He was
sufficiently intimate with Pope to have been present
at his first interview with Warburton, in 1740. This
meeting took place -in Lord Radnor's garden, near
Pope's Villa. Dodsley described it to Warton, and
expressed his astonishment at the high-flown com-
pliments which the poet paid to the author of ' The
Divine Legation.' Spence is included amongst his
early patrons, in one of the scurrilous publications
which Curll levelled against his old enemy of ' The
Dunciad:'

"'Tis kind, indeed, a livery Muse to aid,
Who scribbles farces to augment his trade.
Where you, and Spence, and Glover drive the nail,
The devil's in it if the plot should fail."

Dodsley's farces, which he published after he be-
came a bookseller, were ' The King and the Miller of
Mansfield,' ' Sir John Cockle at Court,' and ' The

198 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. IX.

Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green.' In 1741 he made
one of his very few unsuccessful speculations. He
brought out 'The Public Eegister.' Whilst 'The
Gentleman's Magazine ' and ' The London Magazine '
were flourishing in their monthly attractions, it was
not very presumptuous for a man who could write
well himself, and could secure good writers, to be-
lieve that a ' Weekly Magazine ' might be successful.
It reached only twenty-four numbers. Such was the
subservience of the journalism of that time that he
complains, in his concluding Address, that the estab-
lished magazines had used their influence to prevent
the newspapers advertising his publication.

In 1744 Dodsley edited and published the work
by which his merit as a man of letters has been best
appreciated in more recent times. The ' Select Col-
lection of Old Plays ' was a noble endeavour to make
the dramatists who were the' precursors, contem-
poraries, or immediate successors of Shakspere fami-
liar to modern readers. The editor, in his Preface,
savs : — " When I first conceived the design of collect^
ing together the best and scarcest of our old plays, I
had no intention to do more than search out the
several authors, select what was good from each, and
give as correct an edition of them as I could." The
public encouragement led him to think of prefixing
to each play a brief account of the life and writings
of its author, and an historical essay on the rise and
progress of the English stage. When I reflect upon
the difficulties that Eobert Dodsley must have en-
countered from want of materials, and the corrup-
tion of the various texts of single plays, I cannot but

CHAP. IX. ROBERT DODSLEY. 199

admire the zeal and good taste with which he accom-
plished this labour. Isaac Reed published a new
edition of this collection in 1780. Even then he
says, "The works of our ancient dramatic writers
have suffered a very long and, some few excepted, a
very general neglect. Though possessed of innu-
merable beauties, they have been known in so im-
perfect a manner that their very names have almost
escaped the readers of the present times." Making
some valuable additions to the original works, and
bringing to its editorship an amount of critical know-
ledge which few possessed when Dodsley undertook
the publication, he does justice to the merits of his
predecessor : — " The first edition of the present
volumes was one of the many excellent plans pro-
duced by the late Mr. Robert Dodsley ; a man to
whom literature is under so many obligations that it
would be unpardonable to neglect this opportunity of
informing those who may have received any pleasure
from, the work, that they owe it to a person whose
merit and abilities raised him from an obscure situa-
tion in life to affluence and independence He

was a generous friend, an encourager of men of
genius ; and acquired the esteem and respect of all
who were acquainted with him. It was his happiness
to pass the greater part of his life with those whose
names will be revered by posterity, by most of whom
he was loved as much for the virtues of his heart as
he was admired on account of his excellent writings."
I may be forgiven if I pursue the story of such an
old bookseller into details which may be considered
tedious or unnecessary.

200 SHADOWS 01'' THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. IX.

' The Preceptor,' compiled by Dodsley, and pub-
lished by him in 1748, was described with much jus-
tice as "one of the most valuable books for the
improvement of young minds that has appeared in
any language." This eulogium by Boswell was in-
troductory to the statement that Dr. Johnson wrote
the Preface. ' The Preceptor ' has been superseded
by elementary books which have kept pace with the
advance of knowledge, but it has merits which well
adapted it to the purposes of self-instruction. It is a
book upon which I myself look back with agreeable
recollections, such as are not associated with more pre-
tentious guides to general knowledge. A smaller work,
written by Dodsley, which also appeared about the
same time, was formerly known in every circle of
English readers. ' The Economy of Human Life,
translated from an Indian Manuscript, written by an
Ancient Brahmin,' derived something of its extra-
ordinary popularity from a belief that it was the
composition of Lord Chesterfield. But its intrinsic
merits soon secured, and long preserved, for it a place
in every collection of books in which moral precepts
are presented in an attractive form. The chief at-
traction of this little book was to be found in its
approach to an imitation of the language of the
Sacred Writings. But it was justly remarked by a
contemporary reviewer, that "the style and manner
are so much beneath the great original from which
they are copied, that the precept is rather enfeebled
than enforced by the imitation."

In 1758 Dodsley > completed * A Collection of
Poems, in six volumes, by several hands.' The

CJIAP. IX. KUUEIIT DODSLEY. 201

volumes appeared at intervals from 1748. Boswell
writes in 1776 : "I related a dispute between Gold-
smith and Mr. Robert Dodsley one day when they and
I were dining at Tom Davies's, in 1762. Goldsmith
asserted that there was no poetry produced in this
age. Dodsley appealed to his own Collection, and
maintained that though they could not find a palace
like Dryden's ' Ode on St. Cecilia's Day,' you had
villages composed of very pretty houses, and he men-
tioned particularly ' The Spleen.' " Johnson replied
that 'The Spleen' in Dodsley 's Collection, upon
which he chiefly rested, is not poetry. It seems odd
that this poem should have been cited even as one of
the prettiest of village houses, for it has few lines
above the common level, if I except an image that
has been often quoted :

" To cure the mind's wrong bias, Spleen,
Some recommend the bowling-green ;
Some, hilly walks ; all, exercise ;
Fling but a stone, the giant dies."

In this Collection there are several poems that
have maintained a more enduring reputation than
this, by Mr. Matthew Green, of the Custom-House.
There is Dyer's * Grongar Hill,' Shenstone's ' School-
mistress,' Collins's ' Ode to Evening,' Gray's ' Dis-
tant Prospect of Eton College,' and half-a-dozen
others, that long held their honoured place in En-
field's ' Speaker,' and similar books for youth. Many
of these pieces were original contributions; others
were inserted with the laudable desire " to preserve
to the public those poetical performances which
seemed to merit a longer remembrance that what

202 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. IX.

would probably be secured to them by the manner
wherein they were originally published."

Towards the middle of the century I trace James,
a brother of Kobert Dodsley, occupying a position in
the business at Pall Mall. He was twenty-two years
younger than Kobert, so that when he was a listener
to a remarkable conversation, in 1745, which he
mentioned in later years to Boswell, he had just at-
tained his majority. The youth had by that time
become familiar with the singular appearance and
grotesque habits of the author of 'London,' but he
had also witnessed the deference with which Kobert
invariably treated this personage. The restless head,
under the wig all awry, has suddenly become fixed
in its attention, as the bookseller says to him,
" Would you allow me to suggest that an English
Dictionaiy would be a work eminently fitted for you
to undertake. We want a dictionary, not filled with
technical words, like Bailey's, but one in which
examples of the uses of words should be furnished
by quotations from .our best writers." " Do you speak
seriously, Sir, as a matter of business ? " said Mr. John-
son. " Certainly. I am sure I could easily find asso-
ciates in such an honourable undertaking. I would

speak to " " Sir, I believe I shall not undertake

it." " I hope," said Mr. Dodsley, " that you will not
hastily decide against my suggestion." " No, Sir, no ;
I have thought of such a thing before." " The labour
would be worthy of you, Sir." "The dictionary-
maker is a mere pioneer of literature. I scarcely
desire to be such a slave." "Mr. Pope," replied
Dodsley, " did not take that view of the matter. He

CHAP. IX. EGBERT DODSLEY. 203

had made some collections of authorities from the
best writers, and I believe I could put these papers
into your hands." Mr. Johnson went his way in a
more abstracted state of mind than when he entered
the shop. After a sufficient time for consideration,
he published a plan of the dictionary, addressed to
the Earl of Chesterfield, then one of the Secretaries
of State. This was at the desire of Dodsley, who was
patronised by the Peer, of whom it was afterwards
said by the author of the dictionary, " This man I
thought had been a lord among wits, but I find he is
only a wit among lords." In connexion with Mr. An-
drew Millar, Messrs. Knapton, Messrs. Longman, and
Mr. Hitch, Dodsley became a proprietor of the copy-
right of the dictionary. Although he had suggested
the undertaking and by his recommendation had
procured the employment of Johnson upon the work,
Millar took its principal management, as it proceeded
through the press. During the seven years in which
this great labour was proceeding, Johnson was in the
habit of receiving advances from Millar, which made
the booksellers impatient for its termination. The six
amanuenses were at last dismissed ; the final copy was
sent to Mr. Millar ; and when his messenger returned,
Johnson asked him, " Well ! what did he say ? " " Sir,
he said ' Thank God, I have done with him.' " The
bookseller probably did not mean to be ill-natured,
and the author was not angry when he exclaimed, " I
am glad that he thanks God for anything."

In January, 1753, Dodsley commenced the publi-
cation of a periodical paper, called 'The World.'
Whilst ' The Rambler ' was entirely the work of one

204 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. IX.

man, and was continued twice a week without inter-
mission for two years, ' The World ' was the produc-
tion of many contributors, and only made its appear-
ance weekly. The stately sentences and lofty
morality of Johnson were essentially contrasted with
the plan of this new paper, which was " to ridicule,
with novelty and good humour, the fashions, follies,
vices, and absurdities of that part of the human spe-
cies which calls itself The World." Dodsley, who
suggested the title, was enabled to gather around
him writers well qualified to carry out such a scheme.
They were mostly men who knew the manners of
what is called the best society from a more intimate
acquaintance than that furnished by coffee-houses.
They had in this respect a just claim to be considered
the natural successors of the great Essayists of the
reign of Anne. Edward Moore, who was the caterer
for the work, and received from Dodsley three
guineas for every paper Avritten by himself or others,
was the friend of Lord Lyttelton, who procured for
him the gratuitous assistance of Lord Chesterfield,
Eichard Owen Cambridge, Horace Walpole, and
others who belonged to the fashionable circles. Ches-
terfield contributed many papers which were equally
distinguished for wit and good taste. Of this number
of articles, two were destined to attract more atten-
tion in later times than any other of this collection
of essays. Number 100 thus commences : " I heard
the' other day with great pleasure, from my worthy
friend Mr. Dodsley, that Mr. Johnson's English Dic-
tionary, with a grammar and history of our language
prefixed, will be published this winter in two large

CHAP. IX. EGBERT DODSLEY. 205

volumes in folio." It was in vain that the famous
Peer attempted to atone for some neglect of the
struggling scholar when he wrote : " Perfection is not
to be expected from man ; but if we are to judge by
the various works of Mr. Johnson already published,
we have good reason to believe that he will bring
this as near to perfection as any man could do."
Johnson was informed by Dodsley that the two
papers in 'The World' were written by Lord Ches-
terfield ; and they produced that celebrated letter of
which the burning words have been impressed upon
many a writer's memory, who has been doomed to
disappointment in his early career : " Is not a patron,
my Lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man
struggling for life in the water, and when he has
reached ground encumbers him with help?" Dodsley
spoke with the feelings of an old bookseller when he
said that he was sorry Johnson had written his letter,
for that he had a property in the dictionary to which
Lord Chesterfield's patronage might have been of con-
sequence. What bookseller of a century later would
not have rejoiced, that a letter so calculated to rivet
public attention upon the forthcoming work was hurled
at the pride of rank by one who was not displeased
with being called " the prouder man of the two ? "

In the opening of this chapter I have quoted four
lines from Dodsley's poem of 'Agriculture.' This
production, in three cantos, was only a portion of a
larger poem which he contemplated, entitled, ' Public
Virtue.' Sixteen years after Dodsley's death, John-
son spoke of it with contempt : " It was fine blank "
(sneering, as he usually did, at blank- verse) : " how-

206 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. IX.

ever this miserable poem did not sell ; and my poor
friend Doddy said Public Virtue was not a subject
to interest the age." Yet there are few more pleasing
descriptions than a passage in ' Agriculture,' in which
the merits of landscape-gardening are set forth, in
contrast with

" the regular deformity

Of plans by line and compass, rules abhorr'd

In Nature's free plantations."

From his friend, the Rev. Joseph Spence, he had
probably derived the taste and knowledge requisite
for the appreciation of what was then almost a new
art. At Byfleet, in Surrey, the successful author
of ' Polymetis,' and the now better known collector of
* Anecdotes, Observations, and Characters of Books
and Men/ employed many years of his blameless
life in making the grounds around his seat a model
of "the reformed style of picturesque gardening."
Byfleet once attracted almost as much notice as the
Leasowes. Dodsley seems to point to Shenstone and
his achievements in the following passage, which I
may be permitted to extract, as no one is likely to
take the trouble to look at the poem : —

" There from his forming hand new scenes arise,
The fair creation of his fancy's eye.
Lo ! bosom'd in the solemn shady grove,
Whose reverend branches wave on yonder hill,
He views the moss-grown temple's ruin'd tower,
Cover'd with creeping ivy's cluster'd leaves ;
The mansion seeming of some rural god,
Whom nature's choristers, in untaught hymns
Of wild yet sweetest harmony, adore.
From the bold brow of that aspiring steep,
Where hang the nibbling flocks, and view below

CHAP. IX. ROBERT DODSLEY. 207

Their downward shadows in the grassy wave,

What pleasing landscapes spread before his eye !

Of scatter'd villages, and winding streams,

And meadows green, and woods, and distant spires,

Seeming, above the blue horizon's bound,

To prop the canopy of Heav'n. Now lost

Amidst a glooming wilderness of shrubs,

The golden orange, arbute ever green,

The early-blooming almond, feathery pine,

Fair opulus, to spring, to autumn dear,

And the sweet shades of varying verdure, caught

From soft Acacia's gently-waving branch,

Heedless he wanders : while the grateful scents

Of sweet-briar, roses, honeysuckles wild,

Eegale the smell ; and to th' enchanted eye,

Mezereon's purple, laurustinus' white,

And pale laburnum's pendent flowers display

Their different beauties. O'er the smooth- shorn grass

His lingering footsteps leisurely proceed,

In meditation deep. — When, hark ! the sound

Of distant water steals upon his ear ;

And sudden opens to his pausing eye

The rapid rough cascade, from the rude rock

Down dashing in a stream of lucid foam :

Then glides away, meandering o'er the lawn,

A liquid surface ; shining seen afar, /

At intervals, beneath the shadowy trees ;

Till lost and buried in the distant grove.

Wrapt into sacred musing, he reclines

Beneath the covert of embowering shades ;

And, painting to his mind the bustling scenes

Of pride and bold ambition, pities kings."

Dodsley wrote a prose description of the Leasowes,
which, after Shenstone's death, he prefixed to an
edition of his works. He visited Shenstone, in com-
pany with Spence, in 1758. Ninety years after this,
Hugh Miller went out of his route to see the Lea-
sowes. There is no more beautiful local description

208 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. IX.

than that of his visit to the creations of Shenstone,
which were changed, indeed, but not obliterated.
His account is thus introduced : " Shenstone was one
of the ten or twelve English poets whose works I had
the happiness of possessing when a boy, and which,
during some eight or ten years of my life — for books
at the time formed luxuries of difficult procurement,
and I had to make the most of those I had — I used
to read over and over, at the rate of about twice in
the twelvemonth. And every time I read the poems
I was sure also to read Dodsley's appended descrip-
tion of the Leasowes. I could never form from it
any idea of the place as a whole ; the imagery seemed
broken up into detached slips, like the imagery of
a magic-lantern ; but then nothing could be finer
than the insulated slips ; and my mind was filled
with gorgeous pictures, all fresh and bright, of
* sloping groves,' ' tufted knolls,' ' wooded valleys,'
'sequestered lakes,' and 'noisy rivulets,' — of rich
grassy lawns, and cascades that come bursting in
foam from bosky hill-sides, — of monumental urns,
tablets, and temples, — of hermitages and priories ;
and I had now come to see in what degree my concep-
tions, drawn from the description, corresponded with
the original, if, indeed, the original still maintained
the impress given it by the genius of Shenstone."
It was something for the bookseller — "the poetic
bibliopole," as Miller calls him — to have written a
' Guide Book ' that could, after the lapse of many
years, interest others than the ordinary run of sight-
seers. " Much about the time when young Walter
Scott was gloating over Dodsley, and wishing he, too,

CHAP. IX. ROBERT DODSLEY. 209

had a property of which to make a plaything, what
Shenstone had built and inscribed on the Leasowes
could be known but from Dodsley alone. His arti-
ficialities had perished, like the artificialities of
another kind of the poets his contemporaries; and
nothing survived in his more material works, as in
their writings, save those delightful portions in which
he had but given body and expression to the liar-
monies of nature." *

During his long course of bookselling and writing,
Dodsley was never exhorted, as an Edinburgh reviewer
exhorted Mr. Mawman, in 1806, "not to take the
bread out of the mouths of his authors, nor to ruin
the mystery of bookniaking, by combining it with a
much more lucrative occupation." He was a pub-
lisher of numerous Plays, amongst others, of Brooke's
' Gustavus Vasa ;' of Johnson's ' Irene ;' of Whitehead's
'Roman Father,' and his ' Creusa, Queen of Athens ;' of
Young's ' Brothers ;' of Morgan's ' Philoclea ;' of Jones's
' Earl of Essex.' Yet his authors do not appear to
have manifested any jealousy when they beheld their
publisher amongst the successful writers of Tragedy.
One dramatist, Dr. John Brown, author of ' Bar-
barossa,' was either mad or jealous, when he wrote to
the man who had become eminent both as bookseller
and author — " Footman's language I never return."
Horace Walpole relates this with generous indigna-
tion; saying to George Montagu, "You know how
decent, humble, inoffensive a creature Dodsley is;
how little apt to forget or disguise his having been a

* ' First Impressions of England and its People.'

P

210 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. IX.

footman." Johnson has described the first represen-
tation of ' Cleone :' " The two Wartons just looked
into the town, and were taken to see * Cleone,' where
David [Garrick] says, they were starved for want of
company to keep them warm. David and Doddy have
had a new quarrel, and, I think, cannot conveniently
quarrel any more. ' Cleone ' was well acted by all
the characters ; but Bellamy left nothing to be de-
sired. I went the first night, and supported it as
well as I might ; for Doddy, you know, is my patron,
and I would not desert him. The play was very well re-
ceived. Doddy, after the danger was over, went every
night to the stage-side, and cried at the distress of
poor Cleone." The quarrel with Garrick is described
by Davies. " It was his misfortune to err egregiously,
both in the choice and the rejection of new plays.
In the years 1756, 1758, 1759, he successively rejected
the ' Douglas ' of Mr. John Home, Dodsley's ' Cleone,'
and the ' Orphan of China,' by Mr. Murphy." * Dodsley
might have patiently borne the rejection, had not
Garrick adopted some very illiberal means to prevent
its success at the rival theatre. An author crying
over the distress of his heroine is certainly an un-
common exhibition of what we may call a morbid
vanity. Yet there is probably some fascination in the
dramatic form of poetical composition which made
Dodsley weep when he listened to his own words.
Talfourd rarely lost an opportunity of reciting ' Ion,'
not for the gratification of others, but whenever he
could escape from company to the greater happiness
ol his own complacent musings. Yet this most ami-

* « Life of Garrick,' vol. i. 249.

CHAP. IX. ROBERT DODSLEY. 211

able and accomplished lawyer never obtruded his
scenes and characters. He solaced himself with them
in his solitary walks, or in the silence of the night.
Though Dodsley wept over his own dialogue, yet
when he was told that Johnson held that for pathetic
effect no play of Otway's could compete with ' Cleone,'
he exclaimed with undoubted sincerity, ' It is too
much.'"

It is quite time that I should leave the author and
return to the bookseller. There is one publication
that issued in 1759 from the shop in Pall Mall,
which has enjoyed a century's vitality. Three years
before the publication of the 'Annual Register,' a
young Irishman, who had been in London for some
time, applied to Dodsley to publish a little tract,
entitled ' A Vindication of Natural Society, &c., by
a late Noble Writer.' The applicant was probably
known to the booksellers as one supposed to be a
writer for newspapers and periodical works, but who
did not appear to be following the profession of the
law, which it was understood that he had come to
town to pursue, when he was entered at the Middle
Temple. It is probable that Edmund Burke did not
at first communicate to the bookseller the secret of
the ' Vindication of Natural Society.' It was pub-
lished originally without an explanatory Preface, and
was generally believed to be a posthumous work of
Lord Bolingbroke. The flowing and eloquent style,
the whole scope of the reasoning, were so character-
istic of the great writer and statesman, that few would
conclude that it was a wonderful imitation, produced
by a person of original genius and accurate know-

P2

212 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. IX.

ledge. When the fabrication was avowed, the real
author explained his design, which was, " to show that
without the exertion of any considerable powers the
same engines which were employed for the destruc-
tion of Religion might be employed with equal suc-
cess for the subversion of Government." Dodsley
soon after published for his new friend the ' Enquiry
into the Sublime and Beautiful.' The 'History of
the European Settlements in America,' though pub-
lished anonymously, is undoubtedly Burke's work.
His power of historical narrative was here exhibited ;
and Dodsley made a wise decision when he selected
this rising man as the conductor and chief writer of
* The Annual Register.' For many years Burke con-
tinued to write the historical portion. He had higher
ideas than those of a dry annalist when he engaged
in this congenial labour; and when he undertook,
in this volume for 1758, to narrate the events of a
war carried on in the four quarters of the world, he
accomplished a task which the dull chroniclers who
preceded him seldom thought capable of being made
acceptable to the critical as well as to the cursory
reader, by accuracy and extent of research, and by
vigour and elegance of style. The connexion of the
greatest philosophical statesman of modern times long
continued with the Dodsleys. When Robert died,
his brother James succeeded to the flourishing busi-
ness, in which he had previously been a partner.
His was a long career of honourable prosperity. Like
the elder of these deserving men, he seems never
to have lost any of his earlier supporters. James
Dodsley, in 1790, published Burke's famous ' Re-

CHAP. IX. EGBERT DODSLEY. 213

flections on the Revolution in France,' of which it is
recorded by Nichols that he sold eighteen thousand
copies. For some years before his death, in 1797,
he kept no public shop, but was a wholesale dealer
in books which were his own copyright.

Robert Dodsley died in 1764, when on a visit to
Mr. Spence, who was a prebendary of the Cathedral
of Durham. He was buried in the Abbey Church-
yard there ; and his epitaph was written by this
warm and constant friend : —

" If you have any respect
for uncommon industry and merit,

regard this place,
in which are deposited the remains of

MB. ROBERT DODSLEY ;

who, as an Author, raised himself

much above what could have been expected

from one in his rank of life,

and without a learned education ;

and who, as a man, was scarce

exceeded by any in integrity of heart,

and purity of manners and conversation.

He left this life for a better,

Sept. 25, 1764,
In the 61st year of his age."

214 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. X.

CHAPTER X.

ANDREW MILLAR; CADELL AND STRAHAN.

N 1736 the booksellers of London were
threatened with a competition which ap-
peared likely to assume a very formidable
character. A Society was established for
the Encouragement of Learning. Of this Society
the Duke of Richmond was the President ; noblemen
of high character were members of its Committee of
Management; learned doctors and professors were
also of this committee ; and literature had its repre-
sentatives in the persons of Paul Whitehead and
James Thomson. The Secretary of this society was
an enthusiastic Scot, Alexander Gordon, who, ten
years before, had his head full of a project to make
a communication by a canal between the Clyde and
the Forth, and who is described as having "made
trial of all the ways by which a man could get an
honest livelihood." There is extant a letter from this
gentleman in which he informs Dr. Richardson, the
Master of Emanuel College, Cambridge, how they
are determined to spare neither pains nor charges in
what they shall publish. "In fine," he writes,
" nothing is wanting but to set out with some author
of genius or note, in order to give the public a spe-
cimen of their desire to serve them as well as the

CH. X. ANDREW MILLAR ; CADELL AND STRAHAN. 215

author." He solicits therefore the good offices of
Dr. Richardson to induce Dr. Middleton, who, he
hears, is engaged upon the Life of Cicero, to give the
Society the offer of publishing it. He adds " that in
point of interest, it will be a little estate to the
author whose work they begin with, for every mortal
will buy it." Conyers Middleton was obstinate
enough to take what was then the usual course —
publishing by subscription; and he made "a little
estate" out of his two quarto volumes, although he
had not the imprimatur of the Duke of Richmond.
It was rather an evil omen also, that one of the most
unmanageable and disputatious of English scholars
turned away, and would not swallow the tempting bait.
Gordon writes : " You have no doubt heard in what a
discouraging way Dr. Bentley has used our Society : for,
though his work of Manilius was ready to be printed,
and he desired by several persons to have it published
by the Society, he not only raised such ill-grounded
objections against the institution itself, but chose to
throw it into the hands of a common bookseller, than
in those of the Society, which has not only made seve-
ral gentlemen of letters and high life exclaim against
the discouraging and ungenerous act, but will be re-
corded to the learned world, perhaps, when he is
dead and rotten." * The Society, for the Encourage-
ment of Learning, never proposed to accomplish any
end beyond what was being accomplished by book-
sellers in the regular way of trade. It had no purpose
of making knowledge more accessible to the general
community by popularising it, or by promoting the

* Nichols's ' Literary Anecdotes,' vol. ii. p. 92.

216 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. X.

cheapness of books. It dragged on an existence for
twelve years, sometimes contracting with booksellers,
sometimes publishing on its own account at its own
shop. It made an end, without publishing any work
that had a chance of being profitable either to author
or bookseller, and it left to some of its patrons, irre-
sponsible or not, a legacy of two thousand pounds
debt. Mr. Gordon had proclaimed as an argument
for influencing Dr. Middleton, that " it is as much the
duty of a great author to lend a helping hand to en-
courage and countenance so laudable an institution as
is that of this Society, as it is for the Society to assist
and encourage the author." The great author would
not listen to the voice of the charmer. James Thom-
son might have been flattered by sitting at the same
board with dukes and earls, but he was not induced
by their blandishments to desert his old friend,
Andrew Millar, who had published the ' Seasons ' in
1730, and who continued to be his publisher till his
poetical career was closed with * The Castle of Indo-
lence,' in 1748.

Boswell records that, in 1755, when Millar had been
established in London about a quarter of a century,
Johnson said of him, " I respect Millar, sir. He has
raised the price of literature." The liberality of the
bookseller in the purchase of copyrights was one of
the principal causes of his own success. Many "a
great author " was willing " to lend a helping hand "
to him. " During the better half of the past cen-
tury," writes the worthy John Nichols, "Jacob
Tonson and Andrew Millar were the best patrons
of literature, a fact rendered unquestionable by the
valuable works produced under their fostering and

Cir. X. ANDREW MILLAR ; CADELL ASD STliAHAX. 217

genial hands." Again : " That eminent bookseller,
Andrew Millar, the steady patron of Thomson and
Fielding, and many other eminent authors." Yet it
was long a pleasant delusion of the old booksellers,
that patronage of authors had only changed from
the Ma3cenas of the Cabinet to the Mascenas of the
Counting-house. If the literary gossip of the last
century is to be credited, Millar made more thou-
sands by Fielding's novels than he paid hundreds to
the needy and extravagant author. If Thomson's
'Liberty' were a bad bargain, 'The Seasons' must
have been "a little estate." Millar had seen the
separate poems of * Winter,' * Summer,' ' Spring,'
growing into popularity in the hands of other book-
sellers. He published ' Autumn,' and then the com-
plete poem, ' The Seasons,' as it has come down to
us, to be multiplied again and again by generations
of publishers.

Millar, and the booksellers of the middle of the
last century, gave large sums for copyright, because
it was then considered a perpetuity. They were, of
course, often mistaken in their estimates of value.
When Lord Bolingbroke died in 1751, he left all his
writings, published and unpublished, to Mr. Mallet.
The fact has been preserved from oblivion by Johnson's
invective, that one scoundrel loaded a blunderbuss
and left another half-a-crown to fire it off. Davies,
a good authority, says — " Mallet dreamt of getting
golden mountains by Bolingbroke's legacy. He was
so sanguine in his expectations, that he rejected the
offer of three thousand pounds, tendered to him by
Mr. Millar, the bookseller, for the copyright of that
nobleman's works ; at the same time he was so dis-

218 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. X.

tressed for ready cash, that he was forced to borrow
money of Mr. Millar, to pay his stationer and
printer." Mallet published Bolingbroke's works on
his own account, in five volumes quarto. Davies
says that the edition was not sold off in twenty years.
Upon the supposed perpetuity of a copyright, there
is an interesting passage in Boswell's Johnson, under
the date of 1763 : — " Mr. Alexander Donaldson,
bookseller of Edinburgh, had for some time opened a
shop in London, and sold his cheap editions of the
most popular English books, in defiance of the sup-
posed common-law right of literary property, John-
son, though he concurred in the opinion which was
afterwards sanctioned by a judgment of the House
of Lords, that there was no such right, was at this
time very angry that the booksellers of London, for
whom he uniformly professed much regard, should
suffer from an invasion of what they had ever con-
sidered to be secure ; and he was loud and violent
against Mr. Donaldson. ' He is a fellow who takes
advantage of the law to injure his brethren ; for
notwithstanding that the statute secures only fourteen
years of exclusive right, it has always been under-
stood by the trade, that he who buys the copyright
of a book from the author obtains a perpetual
property ; and upon that belief numberless bargains
are made to transfer that property after the expira-
tion of the statutory term. Now, Donaldson, I say,
takes advantage here of people who have really an
equitable title from usage; and if we consider how
few of the books, of which they buy the property,
succeed so well as to bring profit, we should be of
opinion that the term of fourteen years is too short ;

CH. X. ANDREW MILLAR ; CADELL AND STRAHAN. 219

it should be sixty years.' Dempster: 'Donaldson,
sir, is anxious for the encouragement of literature.
He reduces the price of books, so that poor students
may buy them.' Johnson (laughing): 'Well, sir,
allowing that to be his motive, he is no better than
Kobin Hood, who robbed the rich in order to give
to the poor.' "

Amongst the most successful books of modern
time — a book in which the original publisher and
others long retained almost a perpetuity of copy-
right under "an equitable title from usage" — was
' Hume's History of England.' It was published in
separate volumes, and the first volume, issued at
Edinburgh, included the reigns of James I. and
Charles I. The author has recorded in his own
life, his bitter disappointment at the mode in
which it was originally received. " I was, I own,
sanguine in my expectations of the success of this
work, I thought that I was the only historian
that had at once neglected present power, interest,
and authority, and the cry of popular prejudices ;
and as the subject was suited to every capacity,
I expected proportional applause. But miserable
was my disappointment. I was assailed by one
cry of reproach, disapprobation, and even detesta-
tion ; English, Scotch, and Irish, Whig and Tory,
Churchman and Sectary, Freethinker and Eeli-
gionist, Patriot and Courtier, united in their rage
against the man who had presumed to shed a gene-
rous tear for the fate of Charles I. and the Earl
of Strafford ; and after the first ebullitions of their
fury were over, what was still more mortifying,

220 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. X.

the book seemed to sink into oblivion. Mr. Millar
told me, that in a twelvemonth he sold only forty-
five copies of it. I scarcely, indeed, heard of one
man in the three kingdoms, considerable for rank or
letters, that could endure the book. I must only
except the primate of England, Dr. Herring, and
the primate of Ireland, Dr. Stone, which seem two
odd exceptions. These dignified prelates separately
sent me messages ' not to be discouraged.' " The sub-
sequent success of the history is attributed by Mr.
Burton in great part to the exertions of Millar.
" An arrangement was made, by which he should
take the History under his protection, — publish the
subsequent volumes, and push the sale of the first.
The arrangement is said to have been recommended
by Hume's Edinburgh publishers ; and it shows how
much, in that age, as probably also in this, even a
great work may depend on the publisher's exertions,
for giving it a hold on the public mind."

Hume, mortified at the ill success of his first
volumes, had determined to change his name and
retire to France. The breaking out of war prevented
this ; and he took the better resolution to remain at
home and persevere. The History was concluded in
1761. Of this period he writes in a very different
tone : " Notwithstanding the variety of events and
seasons to which my writings had been exposed,
they had still been making such advances, that the
copy-money given me by the booksellers much ex-
ceeded anything formerly known in England. I was
become not only independent but opulent."

Without altogether doubting that in the last cen-

CH. X. ANDREW MILLAR ; CADELL AND STRAHAN. 221

tury, as in the present, a great work may depend for
its success on the publisher's exertions, I am inclined
to attribute the gradual change in the reception of
Hume's History to an essential revolution in the
public taste. A new class of readers had arisen, who
wanted the road of historical knowledge to be made
smoother and pleasanter. Hume was the first English
writer who rendered History agreeable reading. It
was reserved for him to take the cumbrous folios
which a man could scarcely lift, much less digest, and
distil them into very pleasant octavos. The old pon-
derous Eoniances had been banished by Fielding and
Goldsmith. Epics, such as Blackmore produced, had
given place to Legendary Tales. All knowledge was
beginning to be condensed and popularized. The
English History of Eapin, translated by Tindal,
and continued by him, was in five volumes folio, and
twenty-one volumes octavo. It was, deservedly, in high
estimation ; and the addition to the folios of Houbra-
keu's Portraits rendered them alluring to many a
reader who glanced at the text, and fancied he saw true
representations of the Plantagenets and Tudors. The
merit of Rapin and Tindal was remarkable in their
abstinence from the spirit of party. Carte was, on
the other hand, the most violent of partisans ; and he
thus destroyed the value of his unwearied research.
His History, published by subscription, was proceed-
ing successfully in its sale, till, in evil hour, he main-
tained that the royal virtue of curing the King's
Evil was powerful in the exiled Stuarts, but had alto-
gether departed from the House of Brunswick. His
four volumes in folio went to the trunk-maker. It

222 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. X.

was to these champions in heavy armour that Hume
opposed his light weapons. The beauty of style was
too much for the weight of authorities. Nearly a
century was to pass over before the reputation of
Hume was to be assailed by the cruelest of devices
—that of fitting his book for "The Student," by
changing his facts ; modifying or suppressing his
opinions, religious and political; and taking such
liberties with his style as a bad copyist attempts with
the masterpieces of a great painter.

The middle of the eighteenth century may be
regarded as the great era of popular historical books.
What Hume accomplished so triumphantly, in widen-
ing the circle of historical readers, was attempted
with less ultimate success by Smollett. Hume took
up separate portions of our annals, and proceeded
towards a complete history in what may seem a
very irregular order. In 1754, he produced his first
volume, containing the reigns of James I. and
Charles I. ; and his second volume, containing the
Commonwealth, and Charles II. and James II., in
1756. In 1759, he brought out the House of Tudor.
In 1762, the early history to Henry VII. Smollett
took a bolder grasp of the whole subject, and, at the
period when Hume published his first volume on
the Stuarts, produced his * Compleat History of Eng-
land, deduced from the Descent of Julius Csesar to the
Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle.' His four ponderous quarto
volumes, written, it is said, in fourteen months, had
some chance of superseding Hume altogether, when
they were re-issued in weekly numbers, of which
many thousands were sold. But when Hume had

CH. X. ANDREW MILLAR ; CADELL AND STRAHAN. 223

finished his book up to the Revolution, and it was
seen that his scheme would embrace the earlier
periods, its manifest superiority quickly drove the
rival work out of the field, and Smollett had finally
to undertake the humbler labour of being the con-
tinuator of Hume. The two Scotsmen have in this
relation travelled down to our own times in a very
ill-assorted partnership. Nobody now hears of Smol-
lett's ' Compleat History,' which was set forth with
due parade as "Containing the transactions of one
thousand eight hundred and three years." That por-
tion of his historical labours has become as obsolete
as Sir Richard Baker's * Chronicle of the Kings of
England.'

In 1776 Hume wrote to his fortunate countryman,
William Strahan, " There will no books of reputation
now be printed in London but through your hands
and Mr. Cadeli's." Thomas Cadell had been the ap-
prentice of Andrew Millar. This apprentice, accord-
ing to Mr. Nichols, combining industry with intellect,
relieved his master, in a great measure, from the toil
of superintending an immense concern. In 1765
Cadell became a partner, and in 1767 the founder oi
this business — which rivalled that of the Tonsons —
retired, and, as a common consequence of the tran-
sition from a busy to an unemployed life, veiy soon
died. Cadell became his successor. Strahan, a poor
boy from Scotland, who had worked his way to opu-
lence as a printer, and had obtained a share of the
patent of King's printer, was extensively associated
with Cadell in the purchase of copyrights. It was
their good fortune to have their names upon the title-

224 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. X.

pages of most of the great works of their day, and to
have the ephemeral fame of the bookseller preserved,
amidst many revolutions of literary fashion, in the
durable lustre of Gibbon, Robertson, Adam Smith,
and Blackstone.

There is little opportunity for throwing in a taste
of the salt of anecdote, to season the dry details of
the commerce of literature as represented by Cadell
and Strahan. Dr. Johnson, who, from his earliest
time to his latest, manifests almost as extensive a
knowledge of " the trade " as the acutest of that
body, tells us something of the complex operations by
which a book travelled then, as it travels now, from
the warehouse of the publisher into the hands of the
private purchaser. The directors of the Clarendon
Press had taken up a notion that the fraternity of
booksellers, in the sale of the Oxford books, ought to
be contented with less profits than upon ordinary
publications. Johnson, in a letter to Dr. Wetherell,
Master of University College, Oxford, says — " I
suppose, with all our scholastic ignorance of mankind,
we are still too knowing to expect that the book-
sellers will erect themselves into patrons, and buy
and sell under the influence of a disinterested zeal
for the promotion of learning." He then proceeds to
point out through how many hands a book often
passes before it comes into that of the reader; and
what part of the profit each hand must retain as a
motive for transmitting it to the next. He next
tells the learned doctor of Oxford, who wanted to
conduct the University's book-trade upon principles
of economy that would have destroyed it, that they

CH. X. ANDREW MILLAR ; CADELL AND STRAHAN. 225

must allow for profit between thirty and thirty-five
per cent., between six and seven shillings in the
pound. He considers that the reduction will appear
very great, but goes into minute detail to show that
it ought not to be refused. The lapse of a century
has made very little difference in the rate of these
trade allowances. Booksellers have in vain combined
to prevent retailers selling at less than the usual
rate of profit, and some of those who have opposed
this mistake have maintained that the usual rate of
profit is too high. The common sense of the question
was set forth by Dr. Johnson in 1776. " We will
call our primary agent in London, Mr. Cadell, who
receives our books from us, gives them room in his
warehouse, and issues them on demand. By him
they are sold to Mr. Dilly, a wholesale bookseller,
who sends them into the country ; and the last seller
is the country bookseller. Here are three profits to
be paid between the printer and the reader, or, in the
style of commerce, between the manufacturer and
the consumer ; and if any of these profits is too
penuriously distributed, the process of commerce is
interrupted."

When Hume wrote that all the books of reputation
would pass through the hands of Cadell and Strahan,
it was on the occasion of having received a presenta-
tion copy of the first volume of Gibbon's History.
The author of that great book has told us a little of
the circumstances of its publication. He was then
in Parliament. He says — " The volume of my

* J

History, which had been somewhat delayed by the
novelty and tumult of a first session, was now ready

Q

226 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. X.

for the press. After .the perilous adventure had been
declined by niy friend Mr. Elmsley, I agreed upon
easy terms with Mr. Thomas Cadell, a respectable
bookseller, and Mr. William Strahan, an eminent
printer ; and they undertook the care and risk of
the publication, which derived more credit from the
name of the shop than from that of the author. The
last revisal of the proofs was submitted to my
vigilance ; and many blemishes of style, which had
been invisible in the manuscript, were discovered
and corrected in the printed sheet. So moderate
were our hopes, that the original impression had
been stinted to five hundred, till the number was
doubled by the prophetic taste of Mr. Strahan. . . .
I am at a loss how to describe the success of the
work, without betraying the vanity of the writer.
The first impression was exhausted in a few days ; a
second and third edition were scarcely adequate to
the demand ; and the bookseller's property was twice
invaded by the pirates of Dublin. My book was on
every table, and almost on every toilette ; the histo-
rian was crowned by the taste or fashion of the day ;
nor was the general voice disturbed by the barking
of any profane critic. The favour of mankind is
most freely bestowed on a new acquaintance of any
original merit ; and the mutual surprise of the public
and their favourite is productive of those warm sensi-
bilities which at a second meeting can no longer be
re-kindled. If I listened to the music of praise, I
was more seriously satisfied with the approbation of
my judges. The candour of Dr. Eobertson embraced
his disciple. A letter from Mr. Hume overpaid the

CH. X. ANDREW MILLAR; CADELL AND STRAHAN. 227

labour of ten years ; but I have never presumed to
accept a place in the triumvirate of British histo-
rians." Ninety years have established Gibbon as far
the greatest of that triumvirate.

The writer of ' The Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire' had no cause to be dissatisfied with the
dealings of his publishers. A thousand copies were
printed of the first edition. Of the second, he writes,
" The fifteen hundred copies are moving off with
decent speed, and the obliging Cadell begins to
mutter something of a third edition for next year."
The second volume had not then appeared. There
is a document extant, presented by the publishers to
the author : —

" State of the Account of Mr, Gibbon's l Roman Empire,' Third
Edition. 1st. Vol. No., 1000. April 30th, 1777.

£. s. d.
Printing 90 sheets at 11. 6s., with notes at

the bottom of the page 117 0 0

180 reams of paper at 19s 171 0 0

Paid the Corrector, extra care 550

Advertisements and incidental expenses.. .. 16 15 0

£310 0 0

£. s. d.

1000 books at 16s 800 0 0

Deduct as above .. 310 0 0

Profit on this edition when sold £490 0 0

Mr. Gibbon's two-thirds is 326 13 4

Messrs. Strahan and Cadell's 163 6 8

£490 0 0

Errors excepted."

Q 2

228 SHADOWS OP THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. X.

I should be unwilling to raise any invidious
comparisons between the publishers of the eighteenth
and those of the nineteenth century ; but, if I am not
mistaken, the division of profits would, — say twenty-
five years ago, — have been taken upon a different
principle, and the amount would have assumed some-
thing like the following shape : —

Hypothetical Account, upon the half -profit system, of a look which
costs 3JLOZ.

£, s. d. £. s. d.

1000 at 16s 800 0 0

Less 10 per cent, for publisher .. 80 0 0

720 0 0
Deduct as above . . 310 0 0

Profit £410 0 0

Mr. A. half (instead of 32GZ. 13s. 4rf.) .. .. 205 0 0
Messrs. B. (with 801. commission) 205 0 0

£410 0 0

I am happy to pass from such dull matters to a
scene in which the merited success of author and
publisher was celebrated at an appropriate convivial
meeting. The book was finished in 1788, by the
publication of the fourth quarto volume. Of this
event, Gibbon thus writes : " The impression of the
fourth volume had consumed three months. Our
common interest required that we should move with
a quicker pace ; and Mr. Strahan fulfilled his engage-
ment, which few printers could sustain, of delivering
every week three thousand copies of nine sheets.

CH. X. ANDREW MILLAR ; CADELL AND STRAHAN. 229

The day of publication was however delayed, that it
might coincide with the fifty-first anniversary of my
own birth-day ; the double festival was celebrated by
a cheerful literary dinner at Mr. Cadell's house ; and
I seemed to blush while they read an elegant com-
pliment from Mr. Hayley." Gibbon does not mention
who were the guests. Strahan had died in 1785.
Johnson, who was ever a willing partaker of a
literary dinner, whether at a bookseller's or at his
club, had gone in 1784 where the voice of merriment
was no more heard. There is a sketch of a dinner at
which Johnson and Gibbon were present, drawn by
the clever pencil of the younger Colman, in his
' Eandom Records : ' — " The learned Gibbon was a
curious counterbalance to the learned (may I not
say less learned?) Johnson. Their manners and
taste, both in writing and conversation, were as
different as their habiliments. On the day I first
sat down with Johnson, in his rusty brown suit, and
his black worsted stockings, Gibbon was placed
opposite to me in a suit of flowered velvet, with a
bag and sword. Each had his measured phraseology ;
and Johnson's famous parallel between Dryden and
Pope might be loosely parodied in reference to
himself and Gibbon : Johnson's style was grand, and
Gibbon's elegant : the stateliness of the former was
sometimes pedantic, and the latter was occasion-
ally finical. Johnson marched to kettle-drums and
trumpets ; Gibbon moved to flutes and hautboys :
Johnson hewed passages through the Alps, while
Gibbon levelled walks through parks and gardens.

230 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. X.

Mauled as I had been by Johnson, Gibbon poured
balm upon my bruises by condescending, once or
twice in the evening, to talk with me : the great
historian was light and playful, suiting his matter to
the capacity of the boy : but it was done more suo ; —
still his mannerism prevailed; still he tapped his
snuff-box ; still he smirked and smiled, and rounded
his periods with the same air of good-breeding, as if
he were conversing with men. His mouth, melli-
fluous as Plato's, was a round hole nearly in the
centre of his visage."

The shadow of William Strahan flits before me in
the note-books of Bos well. His father was an officer
of the Customs in Scotland, and, says a writer in
' The Lounger,' " gave his son the education which
every lad of decent rank then received in a country
where the avenues to learning were easy, and open to
men of the most moderate circumstances." He was
apprenticed to a Scotch printer, and having learnt
his trade, arrived in London with, what a clever
novel-writer calls, " the traditional twopence-half-
penny." Johnson, who was on the most friendly
terms with the printer who had risen to wealth and
gave good dinners, nevertheless could not forbear to
treat him with his usual sarcasms on Scotland.
Strahan seems, however, to have had no fears of his
friend's prejudices, eccentric habits, and dislike of
conventionalities, when he was desirous that Johnson
should sit by his side in Parliament. The King's
printer had an official duty to perform, in buying a
seat, and supporting the government. It was the

CH. X. ANDREW MILLAR ; CADELL AXD STRAHAN. 231

same duty which the King's turnspit had to per-
form.* Strahan excited no envy of his wealth or
his state in the mind of Johnson. When he was
taken to dinner at Kensington " in Mr. Strahan's
coach," and the conversation turned upon a printer
having acquired a fortune sufficient to keep his
coach, — Hamilton being cited as another printer who
arrived at this grandeur before Strahan, — Johnson
said, " He was in the right : life is short. The sooner
that a man begins to enjoy his wealth the better."
When Johnson and Boswell went to Scotland, the
King's printer was asked by the great moralist to
frank his letters, that the high position might be mani-
fest, through 'the poor land, of the man who had left
it with his whole wardrobe on his back. Garrick
thought Strahan " an obtuse man," but Johnson
asserted the printer's claim to a discriminating judg-
ment even in the matter of an epigram. The author
and the printer were near neighbours. The King's
Printing Office was close to Johnson's House in
Gough Square. Boswell has a pleasing anecdote
arising out of this propinquity : — " Mr. Strahan had
taken a poor boy from the country as an apprentice,
upon Johnson's recommendation. Johnson having
inquired after him, said, * Mr. Strahau, let me have
five guineas on account, and I'll give this boy one.
Nay, if a man recommends a boy, and does nothing
for him, it is sad work. Call him down.' I followed
him into the court-yard, behind Mr. Strahan's house ;
and there I had a proof of what I heard him profess,

* See Burke's Speech on Economic Eefonn.

232 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. X.

that he talked alike to all. ' Some people tell you
that they let themselves down to the capacity of
their hearers. I never do that, I speak uniformly
in as intelligible a manner as I can.' ' Well, my
boy, how do you go on ? ' ' Pretty well, Sir ; but
they are afraid I ar'n't strong enough for some parts
of the business.' JOHNSON : * Why, I shall be sorry
for it ; for when you consider with how little mental
power and corporeal labour a printer can get a
guinea a week, it is a veiy desirable occupation for
you. Do you hear — take all the pains you can ; and
if this does not do, we must think of some other way
of life for you. There's a guinea.' "

CHAP. XI. JOHN NEWBERY. 233

CHAPTER XL

JOHN NEWBEEY.

HIS old Bookseller is a very old friend
of mine. He wound himself round my
heart some seventy years ago, when I
became possessed of an immortal volume,
entitled, 'The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes.'
I felt myself personally honoured in the Dedication :
" To all young Gentlemen and Ladies who are Good,
or intend to be Good, this Book is inscribed by their
old Friend, Mr. John Newbery, in St. Paul's Church-
yard." I do not recollect that I was much taken
with the cuts, by Michael Angelo, as the title-page
set forth. A few years later, and the Vicar of Wake-
field led me into a higher region of fiction. But
from that fascinating book, of which my compre-
hension was somewhat limited at the age of seven,
I learnt how diligently the good man in St. Paul's
Churchyard had worked for my delight. The ex-
cellent Dr. Primrose, sick and penniless at an inn, is
succoured by a traveller, who had stopped to take
refreshment. "This person was no other than the
philanthropic bookseller in St. Paul's Churchyard,
who had written so many little books for children:
he called himself their friend, but he was the friend
of all mankind. He was no sooner alighted but he

234 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. XI.

was in liaste to be gone, for he was ever on business
of the utmost importance, and was at that time
actually compiling materials for the history of one
Mr. Thomas Trip. I immediately recollected tbis
good-natured man's pimpled face."

In the ordinary course of nature I began to put
away childish things, and Mr. Newbery's little books
— although my father had a drawer full of them very
smartly bound in gilt paper — had lost their old
attraction. Priceless now would be this collection,
mixed up with horn-books — a single copy of which is
one of the rarest relics of the olden time. I would
fain set up a theory as to how my father came to
have such a store of these curiosities. In the year
1787 he published 'The Microcosm, a periodical
work, by Gregory Griffin, of the college of Eton.'
Of this production of school -boys, which was destined
to shed a ne'.v lustre upon public school education,
George Canning was the editor, and the writer of
some of its most brilliant papers. Number 30 is
written in that style of mock gravity which took in
dull people and pleased lively ones, whether ex-
hibited by Canning in ' The Microcosm,' or in ' The
Anti-Jacobin.' The Essayist had promised his fellow
citizens that he would point out a set of books to
their observation, from the perusal of which, if
substituted in the place of novels, they might
derive equal advantage and entertainment. Without
dwelling' upon the prefatory matter, which is a little
too long, I pass on to the books which the young wit
and scholar so earnestly recommends. "These are
no other than the instructive and entertaining

CHAP. XI. JOHN NEWBERY. 235

histories of Mr. Thomas Thumb, Mr. John Hicka-
thrift, and sundry other celebrated worthies, a true
and faithful account of whose adventures and
achievements may be had by the curious and public
in general, price twopence, gilt, at Mr. Newbery's,
St. Paul's Churchyard, and at some other gentleman's,
whose name I do not now recollect, the Bouncing B,
Shoe Lane." Mr. Gregory Griffin would not con-
descend to compare Mr. Newbery's books with those
precious farragoes, in the room of which he intends
introducing them to his fellow citizens. In the
heroes of the two to which he has alluded, he finds
a very strong resemblance to those who are immorta-
lised in Homeric song. Hickathrift may be compared
with Achilles, Thumb with Ulysses. But the histories
of the modern worthies unite the great and sublime
of Epic grandeur with the little and the low of
common life, and temper the glaring colours of the
marvellous and terrible with the softer shades of the
domestic and familiar. The picture which Homer,
in the tenth book of the Iliad, draws of Agamemnon,
rising sleepless, and putting on his sandals, is not so
interesting as the sketch of the night preceding that
in which Tom Thumb and his brother were to be
purposely lost in the wood. "Now it was nine
o'clock, and all the children, after eating a piece
of bread and butter, were put to bed, but little Tom
did not eat his, but put it in his pocket ; and now all
the children were fast asleep in their beds, but little
Tom could not sleep for thinking of what he had
heard the night before, so he got up and put on his
shoes and stockings." The form of the Ogre is painted

236 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. XI.

in a style infinitely beyond the Polypheme of Homer,
to say nothing of the terrible poetic imagery of fee,
faw, fum. "It would be an endless task/' says Mr.
Griffin, "to point out every latent beauty, every
unnoticed elegance with which these productions are
interspersed. ... I shall hasten to inform my
fellow citizens that, in compliance with my advice,
my bookseller proposes very soon substituting, in the
room of his present catalogue, a list of all the pro-
ductions of this kind which can be procured either
at Mr. Newbery's or the Bouncing B." This is
admirable fooling, but it serves my purpose, as intro-
ducing a glance at the children's books of the last
century.

Goldsmith, in 1766, described the good-natured,
pimpled-faced bookseller as one "who had written so
many little books for children." Chalmers, in his
preface to the 'Idler,' regards Mr. Newbery as "the
reputed author of many little books for Masters and
Misses." Mr. John Nichols brings forward other
candidates for the honour of projecting and writing
"The Liliputian histories of 'Goody Two Shoes,'
'Giles Gingerbread,' ''Rmmy Trip,' etc., etc."
"It is not generally known," he says, "that to Mr.
Griffith Jones, and a brother of his, Mr. Giles Jones,
in conjunction with Mr. John Newbery, the public
are indebted for the origin of those numerous and
popular little books for the amusement and instruc-
tion of children, which have been ever since received
with universal approbation." Alas ! for the un-
certainty of posthumous fame. Although Mr. Griffith
Jones was editor of 'The London Chronicle,' 'The

CHAP. XI. JOHN NEWBERY. 237

Daily Advertiser/ and 'The Public Ledger,' his good
deeds are written in water. The little books that
were once "received with universal approbation,"
have passed out of the popular knowledge. Their
memories have chiefly survived in Christmas panto-
mimes. In this shape their pathos and their fun,
their romantic adventures, and their domestic inci-
dents, have long been embalmed. Fielding's 'Tom
Thumb,' and Henry Brooke's 'Jack The Giant
Queller/ had higher pretensions than those of stage
display; but 'Cinderella,' the grand Spectacle pro-
duced at Drury Lane in 1804, and 'Mother Goose,'
first acted at Covent Garden in 1806, carried the
fame of Mr. Newbery's heroes and heroines to a
height rarely attained by any succeeding attempts in
the same direction. It might be a curious piece of
literary inquiry to trace the origin of these infantine
fictions into the early days of the minstrels, who, to
use the prosaic language of Ritson, "made it their
business to wander up and down the country chanting
romances, and singing songs and ballads to the harp,
fiddle, or more humble and less artificial instru-
ments." At the exact period when Newbery was
publishing his little books, Percy produced his
'Reliques of English Poetry.' Here we find the
poetical romance of 'Valentine and Ursine.' But
the editor informs us that "the old story-book of
Valentine and Orson (which suggested the plan of
this tale, but it is not strictly followed in it) was
originally a translation from the French, being one
of their earliest attempts at romance." Thomas
Evans, one of the most intelligent of the booksellers,

238 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. XI.

published his first collection of old ballads in 1777.
Here is printed a famous ballad of Tom Thumb, but
its incidents are very different from those in 3Ir.
Newbery's volume. If he and his learned coadjutors
condescended at all to borrow, they would have
found materials in many productions such as the old
story-books to which Percy refers. In Newbery's
time there was a considerable bookseller, Sir James
Hodges, Knight, who, carrying on his business at the
sign of "The Looking-glass," on London Bridge, was
a great dealer in chap-books. Vulgar as these might
seem in the days of King George the Second —
common wares carried about by chapmen — they were
the choicest reading in the days of Queen Elizabeth.
Captain Cox, of Coventry, celebrated by Robert
Laneham as possessing many goodly monuments,
both in prose and poetry, "fair wrapt up in parch-
ment, and bound with a whipcord," is duly honoured,
for "great oversight hath he in matters of story."
Dr. Dibdin, in extracting the passage in which
Queen Elizabeth's Master of the Ceremonies gives
the names of Captain Cox's choice books, goes into
extasies such as a collector only can feel. "The late
Duke of Roxburgh, of never-dying bibliomaniacal
celebrity, would have parted with half the insignia
of his Order of the Garter to have obtained clean
original copies of these fascinating effusions." When
John Newbery was travelling about " on business of
the utmost importance," he would have found copies
in every country town, but such were not the most
valued original copies. Valued, indeed, now are even
the reprints of the last centuiy, which the worthy

CHAP. XI. JOHN NEWBERY. 239

bookseller might have obtained in High Street.
Coventry, where " Shopkeepers and Travellers may at
all Times be supplied, on the most reasonable Terms,
with all kinds of Histories, Godly and other Patters,
Children's Books, Valentine-Writers, Old Ballads, Slip
Songs, Carols, &c., &c., at J. Turner's, Printer." I
have the good fortune to possess a volume of these
dainties, chiefly from Mr. Turner's press, presented to
me by a valued friend, whose inscription on the fly-
leaf I am tempted to copy: "Penny Magazines.
Bought at Mr. Halliwell's sale by A. De Morgan, and
by him presented to Chas. Knight, who spoiled the sale
of them, and deserves to be smothered under them."
Superior as is the literary character of Mr. Newbery's
little books to these relics of the old penny know-
ledge, I am constrained to say that there is not the
slightest difference in the character of the wood-cuts.
The penny chap-books of Coventry, and the three-
penny and sixpenny volumes bound in gilt paper,
that issued from No. 65, in St. Paul's Churchyard,
sufficiently indicate the same epoch of art applied to
book illustration. The elaborate engravings in the
history of Fortunatus in my volume, and the smaller
representations of costume and architecture in the
renowned history of Mrs. Margaret Two Shoes, are
decidedly of the time of the Second George. Fortu-
natus, with his three-cornered Wishing-Hat on his
head, and his ample wig, is a very ugly copy of a
very ugly sign, that dwells in my remembrance —
the Duke's Head, at Windsor — being the faithful
representation of that most amiable hero, Duke
William of Cumberland. "Who," says Mr. Newbery,

240 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. XI.

"does not know Lady Ducklington, or who does not
know that she was buried at this church ?" Certainly
such a parish church as we find depicted at page 43,
and the barn at page 53, are decidedly characteristic
of the early Georgian era. In the art of wood-
cutting there was room for improvement.

There is nothing more remarkable in Mr. New-
bery's little books than the originality of their style.
There have been attempts to approach its simplicity
— its homeliness. Great authors have tried their
hands at imitating its clever adaptation to the
childish intellect, but they have failed. Never was
failure more complete than that of Sir Walter Scott.
He sets about writing his ' Tales of a Grandfather '
for a little boy of five years old. He gets on
famously with 'The Story of Macbeth.' "Now
there lived at this time three old women in the
town of Forres, whom people looked upon as witches,
and supposed they could tell what was to come to
pass. Nobody would believe such follies now-a-days,
except low and ignorant creatures, such as those who
consult gipsies in order to have their fortunes told ;
but in those early times the people were much more
ignorant, and even great men like Macbeth believed
that such persons as the witches of Forres could tell
what was to come to pass afterwards, and listened to
the nonsense they told them, as if the old women
had really been prophetesses. The old women saw
that they were respected and feared, so that they
were tempted to impose upon people by pretending
to tell what was to happen to them ; and they got
presents for doing so.'' But he very soon pitches in

CHAP. XI. JOHN KETVBERY. 241

another key, as he acknowledges in his Preface.
" The compiler may here mention that, after com-
mencing his task in a manner obvious to the most
limited capacity, of which the tale of Macbeth is an
example, he was led to take a different view of the
subject, by finding that a style considerably more
elevated was more interesting to his juvenile reader.
There is no harm, but, on the contrary, there is
benefit in presenting a child with ideas somewhat
beyond his easy and immediate comprehension. The
difficulties thus offered, if not too great or too fre-
quent, stimulate curiosity and encourage exertion."
This is false logic, and scarcely hides the real truth
that Sir Walter could not sustain the difficult task
of writing in the way of his prototypes, Mr. Newbery
and Mr. Griffith Jones. They could carry the
union of puerility and instruction through many
volumes. So Sir Walter turned his intended pretty
stories into an ' Abridged History of Scotland, for the
use of young persons.' He abandoned the Cinderella
and Tom Thumb style after he had written a very
few pages. The child's play was work too hard for
him.

A century has passed away since John Newbery
flourished, but I rejoice to believe that his lore for
the nursery has not been altogether superseded by
the science of the school-room. I presume that the
smart nurse of modern days — the chief business of
whose life seems to be to obstruct the footway with
her perambulator — would scorn to have her memory
burdened with such stories as I was wont to listen to

n

242 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. XI.

with a delight that sensible narratives could never
afford me. Perhaps there are few of the successors
of my " Pegotty " who could repeat the wonderful
story of the old woman with the crooked sixpence,
who went to market to buy a little pig, and could not
get it home, for piggy would not go over the stile. But
though the traditions of the ancient sisterhood, who
once sat by the cradle in mob cap and checked
apron, may be now despised, they cannot die out, for
the printer and the engraver, with all the modern
improvements of their arts, have secured for them a
longer life than even Mr. Newbery might have
anticipated. I have the catalogue before me of the
Original Juvenile Library at the corner of St. Paul's
Churchyard. Nichols records that "Mr. Newbery
was the first of the profession who introduced the
regular system of a juvenile library." Here, in
the same spot where it first grew, this fruitful tree
still flourishes. It has had various careful guardians
during that long period, whose business has been to
prune, and water, and engraft ; and to plant slips and
seedlings over a much wider area. The catalogue
issued in 1865 by " Griffiths and Farran, successors
to Newbery and Harris," has on its title page a
woodcut which has probably adorned a long series of
catalogues. It represents three figures — " Goldsmith
introduced to Newbery by Dr. Johnson."

But between the Juvenile Library of 1765 and of
1865 there were changes in literary taste, and neces-
sarily in books for the young, which multiplied
writers and booksellers in this department. For

CHAP. XI. JOHN XEWBERY. 243

myself, I cannot be sufficiently grateful to Thomas
Day who gave me ' Little Jack ' and ' Sandford and
Merton ; ' nor should I forget Henry Brooke with his
wealth of stories in the 'Fool of Quality.' But a
new source of attraction was to arise in a very few-
years after Mr. Newbery had done his work. There
were two books, the companions of my childhood,
which I presume it would be difficult to find in any
juvenile collection now. And yet they were the
precursors of a revolution in Art. ' The Progress of
Man and Society,' of which Dr. Trusler was the
compiler, was published in 1791 ; and * The Looking-
glass of the Mind ' in 1796. The cuts for these two
books were drawn and engraved by Thomas Bewick.
There were two booksellers of the name of Newbery
living at the same period, and each honourably
connected with Goldsmith. John, of St. Paul's
Churchyard, published the ' Traveller,' in 1765.
Francis, his nephew, of Paternoster Eow, published
'The Vicar of Wakefield,' in 1766. Boswell has
given " authentically, from Johnson's own exact
narration," the history of the sale of this novel to
Francis Newbery — " I received one morning a
message from poor Goldsmith that he was in great
distress, and, as it was not in his power to come to
me, begging that I would come to him as soon as
possible. I sent him a guinea, and promised to come
to him directly. 1 accordingly went as soon as I
was dressed, and found that his landlady had arrested
him for his rent, at which he was in a violent passion.
I perceived that he had already changed my guinea,

R 2

244: SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. XI.

and had got a bottle of Madeira and a glass before
him. I put the cork into the bottle, desired he
would be calm, and began to talk to him of the
means by which he might be extricated. He then
told me that he had a novel ready for the press,
which he produced to me. I looked into it, and saw
its merits; told the landlady I should soon return;
and, having gone to a bookseller, sold it for sixty
pounds. I brought Goldsmith the money, and he
discharged his rent, not without rating his landlady
in a high tone for having used him so ill."

Although Francis Newbery eventually succeeded
to the business of his uncle in St. Paul's Churchyard,
there appears to have been an intermediate proprietor
of the Original Juvenile Library, whom Mr. John
Nichols simply mentions as bookseller in St. Paul's
Churchyard, who died in 1788. Upon an edition of
'Little Goody Two -Shoes,' I find this imprint;
" Printed for T. Carnan, successor to Mr. J. Xewbery."
The reputation of Thomas Carnan is associated with
more durable records than the obituary of the
' Gentleman's Magazine.' He lives in the eloquence
of Erskine. John Newrbery died in 1767 ; and soon
after Carnan entered upon the business in St. Paul's
Churchyard, he became possessed with a very
sensible notion that the Stationers' Company had
no legal title to their monopoly of Almanacs. He
began, therefore, to publish almanacs of his own.
The Company, after having anathematised him as
the base publisher of " counterfeit almanacs," sent
him to prison on a summary process, as regularly as

CHAP. XI. JOHN XEWBERY. 245

he issued his annual commodities. A friend of his
family told me, some forty years ago, that this
incorrigible old bookseller always at this season kept
a clean shirt in his pocket, that he might make a
decent appearance before the magistrate and the
keeper of Newgate. But Carnan persevered, till
the judges of the Court of Common Pleas decided
against the validity of the patent, and an injunction
which had been obtained in the Exchequer was
immediately dissolved. The Stationers' Company
then induced Lord North to bring a Bill into Parlia-
ment to revest in them the monopoly that had been
declared illegal. In 1779 Erskine, in a speech
which remains as one of the great triumphs of his
oratory, procured the rejection of this Bill by a large
majority. " What," some one of my readers may
say, " has this digression to do. with the works of
Goldsmith ? " Carnan, who had become the proprietor
of ' The Traveller,' published by John Newbery,
opposed the re-publication of Goldsmith's poems in
the booksellers' edition of 1779. He was at issue
with the leaders of the trade. " It is much to be
regretted," says Mr. Cunningham, in his preface to
Johnson's ' Lives of the Poets/ " that the petty
interest of a bookseller named Carnan should have
excluded Goldsmith from the number of his Lives."
There was evidently something more than " petty
interest," which set Carnan in direct opposition to
the great body of his fellows. The great question
was in hot dispute in 1777. The Stationers had the
ear of the Prime Minister ; but Carnan was in con-

246 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. XL

fidential intercourse with Erskine. We shall not
see his shadow amongst the forty booksellers who
met at the Chapter Coffee-house to resist " an
invasion of their literary preserves by the publication
at Edinburgh of an edition of The British Poets,
from Chaucer to Churchill."

CHAP. XII. THE CHAPTER COFFEE-HOUSE. 247

CHAPTEE XII.

THE CHAPTEK COFFEE-HOUSE.

WO Undergraduates of Oxford, George
Colman and Bonnel Thornton, com-
menced their literary career in 1754,
with the periodical paper, 'The Connois-
seur.' The experience of these youths, who had been
the Westminster schoolfellows of Cowper, Lloyd, and
Churchill, scarcely justified them in assuming the
dignity of "Mr. Town, Critic and Censor-General."
Yet their liveliness contrasted agreeably with the
solemnity of the 'Rambler,' which had come to a
close in 1752 ; nor were they ignoble rivals of
Hawkesworth, in his 'Adventurer,' commenced in
that year. Colman and Thornton were the Beau-
mont and Fletcher of essayists, and in their con-
cluding number, they declared that almost every
single paper was the joint production of both. They
had both looked upon London with the quick
observation of youth, and were probably better
qualified to describe some of its lighter aspects than
those who desired "to point a moral" in the office of
"Critic and Censor-General." They certainly have
not described at hap-hazard the famous coffee-house
in Paternoster Row, where booksellers "most do con-
gregate." Alas! I am using a wrong tense; the

248 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. XII.

Chapter gradually fell into decay, and within a few
years has ceased to exist. But in connection with
the Old Booksellers, its memory will survive as long
as that of the Mermaid or the Devil Tavern. Thus
writes Mr. Town: "My publisher would not forgive
me, was I to leave the neighbourhood without
taking notice of the Chapter coffee-house, which is
frequented by those encouragers of literature, and
(as they are styled by an eminent critic) 'not the
worst judges of merit, the booksellers.' The con-
versation here naturally turns upon the newest
publications; but their criticisms are somewhat
singular. When they say a good book, they do not
mean to praise the style or sentiment, but the quick
and extensive sale of it. That book, in the phrase of
the Conger, is best which sells most; and if the
demand for Quarles should be greater than for Pope,
he would have the highest place on the rubric-post.
There are also many parts of every work liable to
their remarks, which fall not within the notice of less
accurate observers. A few nights ago, I saw one of
these gentlemen take up a sermon, and after seeming
to peruse it for some time with great attention, he
declared 'it was very good English.' The reader
will judge whether I was most surprised or diverted,
when I discovered that he was not commending the
purity and elegance of the diction, but the beauty of
the type, which, it seems, is known among the
printers by that appellation. We must not, however,
think the members of the Conger strangers to the
deeper parts of literature ; for as carpenters, smiths,
masons, and all mechanics smell of the trade they

CHAP. XII. THE CHAPTER COFFEE-HOUSE. 249

labour at, booksellers take a peculiar turn from their
connexions with books and authors. The character
of the bookseller is commonly formed on the writers
in his service. Thus one is a politician, or a deist;
another affects humour, or aims at turns of wit and
repartee; while a third perhaps is grave, moral, and
sententious."

The members of " The Conger " were a select band,
who, in the middle of the last century, had a common
interest in the copyright of certain books, whether
copyright by law or by usage. It appears that in
1711) five booksellers united themselves under the
name of the Printing Conger. In 1736, this limited
partnership still went on, with the addition of new
names. In that year, a correspondent of Mr. Bowyer
speaks of the Society for Encouraging Learning as
" a downright trading society, a mere Conger ;" adding,
"Forgive me if I misspell so mysterious a word."
About the same period, a second partnership of the
same kind was formed, calling themselves the New
Conger. Mr. Nichols, who records these particulars,
says, " the term Conger was supposed to have been at
first applied to them invidiously, alluding to the
Conger Eel, which is said to swallow the smaller fry ;
or it may possibly have been taken from Congeries"
Whether the "smaller fry" were the minnows of
bookselling or of authorship, Mr. Nichols does not
explain. The Conger, new and old, died out. The
practice of diminishing the individual risk of publica-
tion gradually extended in the division of a book
into shares, varying in amount, each- partner being
liable for his portion of the cost. The arrangements

250 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. XII.

of the shareholders were generally made at the
Chapter coffee-house, and thus, in process of time,
the publications of associated booksellers came to be
called Chapter books. The name is now almost
obsolete. That system of publication has nearly
come to an end. The co-operative system of book-
selling, in which there was really a great deal of
good, mixed however with some evil, has yielded to
a system of the keenest competition. It was at its
height in the year 1777, when there was a great day
at the Chapter. Wordsworth's pastoral scene in the
Lake country lingers in my memory, and suggests
a town parallel : —

" The green field sleeps in the sun :
* * * *

The cattle are grazing,
Their heads never raising :
There are forty feeding like one ! "

Edward Dilly, a leading spirit in the trade, has
described, in a letter to Boswell, how "a meeting
was held, consisting of about forty of the most
respectable booksellers of London." The green
pasture upon which the forty came to feed "like
one," was "an elegant and accurate edition of all the
English poets."

The shadows of some of the finest and fattest of
the herd rise up before me. Mr. EDWARD DILLY
claims precedence as the historiographer of the day.
He says, "The first cause that gave rise to this
undertaking, I believe, was owing to the little trifling
edition of 'The Poets,' printing by the Martins, at
Edinburgh, and to be sold by Bell in London. * * *

CHAP. XII. THE CHAPTER COFFEE-HOUSE. 251

Accordingly, a select number of the most respectable
booksellers met on the occasion, and, on consulting
together, agreed that all the proprietors of copyright
in the various poets should be summoned together,
and when their opinions were given, to proceed
immediately on the business." Mr. Dilly, I may
imagine, duly expatiated at the meeting — as he set
forth to Mr. Boswell — how " the little trifling edition "
was not only printed in unreadable type, and was very
inaccurate, but Avas an invasion of " what we call our
literary property." This bookseller occupies too large
a space in the scanty annals of the trade to be abruptly
dismissed. He is the great dinner-giver of the latter
time of Dr. Johnson.

Coleridge has a wicked Note on that profane poem,
'The Devil's Thoughts/ which I have indiscreetly
quoted, wherein he says that "a young retailer in
the hosiery line, on hearing a description of the net
profits, dinner parties, country houses, &c., of the
trade, exclaimed, 'Ay! that's what I call Life, now.'"
(I will not interrupt my narrative to enquire whether
this young hosier were not Kichard Phillips, or Philip
Eichards, of Leicester, who, having seen something
of the Life of the trade in Leicester gaol for selling
Paine's 'Eights of Man,' came to London, and in
due time, " on the tree of Life sat like a cormorant.")
The young hosier's notion of Life was fully carried
out by Edward and Charles Dilly. Boswell is ever
full of " my worthy booksellers and friends, Messrs.
Dilly, in the Poultry, at whose hospitable and well
covered table I have seen a greater number of
literary men than at any other, except that of Sir

252 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. XII.

Joshua Reynolds." Their parties included men of
all creeds, political and religious. They were Non-
conformists; but in the days before the French
Revolution difference of opinion did not necessarily
produce hatred ; and thus, according to Mr. Nichols,
'•' here Johnson and Wilkes forgot the animosities
of Whig and Tory ; here High Church Divines
and pillars of the Meeting-house relinquished their
polemics, and enjoyed uninterrupted conviviality."
These pleasant meetings seem to have been fatal, in
1779, to the elder brother, Edward, who "literally
talked himself to death." With this faculty of
eloquence, he probably harangued a good deal when
he met the forty in 1777. How, when Dr. Johnson's
name was proposed as the fittest person to write
'•' a concise account of the life of each author," would
he expatiate upon the manifold opportunities he had
enjoyed of being well acquainted with that great man's
powers ! " Yes, gentlemen, he often dines with my
brother and myself. He has too great a mind to be
particular as to the company he meets. It is not
a year ago — yes, it is sixteen months ago — since he
sat by the side of Mr. WTilkes at our table, and they
were quite frank and easy. Mr. Wilkes told a story
about — (Chair, chair), I beg pardon. The business
in hand was — " Chairman : " What poet we should
begin with? Mr. Davies thinks we should include
some of the great writers of the time of Queen
Elizabeth. (No, no, from several voices).

Mr. DAVIES (commonly known as Tom Davies) is
as famous for his tea-parties as Edward and Charles
Dilly for their dinners. Churchill, it is said, drove

CHAP. XII. THE CHAPTER COFFEE-HOUSE. 253

him from his position as an actor in Garrick's com-
pany by his killing satire, of which the pit too
well remembered the line —

" He mouths a sentence as curs mouth a bone."

Under this calamity he found a refuge in his shop in
Russell-street, Covent Garden. Dr. John Campbell,
the author of a Political Survey of Britain, describes
him as " not a bookseller, but a gentleman dealing in
books." Johnson said he was " learned enough for a
clergyman." In his early career as a bookseller he
was not successful. The stage, provincial and metro-
politan, then furnished a living for himself and " his
pretty wife." When Churchill had incited the pit to
hiss his mouthing, he returned to the bosom of " the
trade," and honestly earned a literary reputation as
the author of the ' Life of Garrick ' and of ' Dramatic
Miscellanies.' His was probably an exceptional case,
for he made money by the publication of his own
writings. Boswell has a solemn record of a great
event in his London experience, which introduces us
in 1763 to the domestic life of .Russell-street, Covent
Garden. " On Monday, the 16th of May, when I
was sitting in Mr. Davies's back-parlour, after having
drunk tea with him and Mrs. Davies, Johnson unex-
pectedly came into the shop, and Mr. Davies having
perceived him through the glass-door in the room in
which we were sitting, advancing toward us, he an-
nounced his awful approach to me somewhat in the
manner of an actor in the part of Horatio, when he
addresses Hamlet on the appearance of his father's
ghost, ' Look, my lord, it comes ! '" It would be
tedious to recount many of these tea-drinkings in the

254 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. XII.

back-parlour with the glass-door, at which Johnson is
a prominent figure. He was generally talkative, but
frequently abstracted, and sometimes uttered pious
ejaculations. Boswell records an instance of these
singularities: "His friend, Mr. Thomas Davies, of
whom Churchill says —

' That Davies hath a very pretty wife,'

when Dr. Johnson muttered, ' Lead us not into temp-
tation,' used with waggish and gallant humour to
whisper to Mrs. Davies, ' You, my dear, are the cause
of this.' " Their friendly intercourse continued to
the end of Johnson's life. But I am wandering from
the business of the Chapter coffee-house. Mr. Davies
observed that great as was the admiration of some
scholars for Chaucer, he understood that there was
an opinion amongst his professional brethren that it
would not be wise to introduce his writings into a
popular edition of the poets. (Right, right, from
many voices.) He thought, however, that Spenser —
(No, no). He should like to see in the collection the
Poems of Sir John Davies and the Pastorals of
William Browne, which he had himself reprinted a
few years ago. (And much you got by them, cried out
a stickler for the moderns.) Mr. Davies was beaten,
and he sat down.

At the period of this great day at the Chapter
there was a monthly dining club, held at the Shak-
speare Tavern, composed exclusively of booksellers.
Mr. John Nichols, a member of this club, has supplied
some interesting details of the shining lights of this
society. He looks back, in 1806, upon thirty-five
years of past enjoyment, " when congenial spirits,

CHAP. XII. THE CHAPTER COFFEE-HOUSE. 255

warmed, not heated, with the genuine juice of the
grape, have unreservedly poured out their whole
souls in Attic wit and repartee." This, however, was
an association not wholly devoted to the enjoyment
of the genuine juice of the grape, nor to the pouring
forth of Attic wit and repartee. Serious projects of
business were here discussed. " Here," says Mr.
Nichols, " first were suggested the ideas which led
to the publication of Dr. Johnson's invaluable Lives
of the most eminent English Poets." For this reason
the members of the booksellers' club claim prece-
dence, as I continue to evoke the shadows of the
trade as they congregated in 1777. Tom Davies —
whose lively sallies of pleasantry show him to have
been something more than a " pompous little Bib-
liopole," as he has been termed in later days — has
already passed over my scene. Thomas Cadell and
James Dodsley have appeared in the preceding pages.
Of the remaining members of the booksellers' club,
celebrated by Mr. Nichols, let me first introduce one
who had the honour of being eulogised by Gibbon.

PETER ELMSLEY presented himself to the great
historian in two characters — the sagacious adviser
and the entertaining companion. To Mr. Deyverdun
Gibbon writes : " Je trouve dans le Libraire Elmsley
un conseiller sage, instruit, et discret." In another
letter we find : " I was proud and happy if I could
prevail on Elmsley to enliven the dullness of the
evening." The author of the ' Pursuits of Litera-
ture ' gives his testimony to the merits of Mr. Elmsley,
quoting Gibbon's opinion, and adding that of Mr.
Jacob Bryant, who speaks of this honoured bookseller

256 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. XII.

of the Strand as one " whose zeal for his author can
never be sufficiently commended." Elmsley, whose
principal business was in foreign books, was a great
linguist, with an amount of general knowledge that
fitted him for conversation and correspondence, upon
a familiar and equal footing, with the most illustrious
and accomplished of his day. Though he was a
member of the club at which the idea of the book-
sellers' edition of the Poets originated, he was too
well informed to have acquiesced in the narrow prin-
ciples which determined that selection. His name
does not appear amongst the shareholders of the first
edition, although it is found in the second edition,
when the original collection was somewhat enlarged.
Mr. Dilly, in his letter to Boswell, says that the
London booksellers had undertaken to print " an
elegant and accurate edition of all the English Poets
of reputation, from Chaucer to the present time."
This intention was abandoned. The reason why the
great poets before Cowley are not to be found in a
collection which professed to be a complete body of
English poetry, may be inferred from another passage
in Mr. Dilly 's letter : " My brother will give you a
list of the poets we mean to give, many of which are
within the time of the Act of Queen Anne, which
Martin and Bell cannot give, as they have no pro-
perty in them ; the proprietors are almost all the
booksellers in London of consequence." The ex-
clusive copyright debarred the printers of the Apollo
press, Edinburgh, from inserting Young, Mallet,
Akenside, and Gray, which duly appeared in the
London collection. It was the right by usage of

CHAP. XII. THE CHAPTER COFFEE-HOUSE. 257

" what we call our literary property" which perpe-^
tuated the rubbish of Dorset, Stepney, Walsh, Duke,
Sprat, and the other luminaries of the Augustan age,
which Martin and Bell had sense enough to cast aside.
With a body of English poetry limited to fifty-three
volumes, and thus encumbered, what chance was
there that Chaucer, Surrey, Wyat, Gascoigne, Spenser,
Daniel, Drayton, Davies, Donne, Carew, Drummond,
Browne, Habington, Lovelace — to name a few of the
elder classics — should not be crowded out. Johnson
was not the man to put these matters right : he was
indignant that the London Booksellers' Collection
should be called his. He added to their list Black-
more, Pomfret, Yalden, and Watts. Southey sums
up the matter in a few words, declaring that what
the world before the flood is to historians, the poets
before the Eestoration were to Johnson.

It is not easy to believe that, except iinder some
remarkable delusions as to the public taste, the
more intelligent of the booksellers could have been
perfectly satisfied with the selection for their edition
of the poets. They must have anticipated the
censure with which, after a very little time, their
undertaking was received by a much larger number
of readers than the enthusiastic admirers of our old
poetry. Within seven years of the appearance of
the Booksellers' Collection, Mr. Cadell published
two very remarkable little volumes, ' Select Beauties
of Ancient English Poetry, by Henry Headley, A.B.'
He does not hesitate to sanction by his imprimatur
the strong terms in which this accomplished writer

8

258 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. XII.

speaks of the voluminous Chapter-book : — " A most
unworthy rabble have gained a passport to the
Temple of Fame, much after the following ridi-
culous predicament, so well described on a very
different occasion by Mr. Burke, whose words we
may literally apply. 'He put together a piece of
joinery so closely indented and whimsically dove-
tailed ; a cabinet so variously inlaid ; such a piece
of diversified mosaic, such a tessellated pavement,
without cement — here a bit of black stone, and there
a bit of white — that it was a very curious show, but
utterly unsafe to touch, and unsure to stand on ; the
colleagues whom he had assorted at the same board,
stared at each other, and were obliged to ask, ' Sir,
your name!'" Amongst those, I think, who would
have been foremost to object, was THOMAS EVANS
(mentioned in the preceding chapter). In the veiy
year of the coffee-house meeting, he had edited and
published his * Old Ballads, collected from rare Copies
and MSS.' His son, in his advertisement to a new
edition, says : — " The repeated perusal of Percy's
' Keliques of Ancient Poetry ' first suggested to the
late editor the idea of the present work. The genius
and taste which pervade that beautiful compilation
fascinated his attention and excited his curiosity ; he
regretted that the Doctor had confined his work to
the scanty limits of three volumes, and he resolved
to collect the scattered ballads, which were yet to
be found dispersed through various libraries, in hopes
they might furnish the same entertainment to others
that he had himself derived from them." Mr. John

CHAP. XII. THE CHAPTER COFFEE-HOUSE. 259

Forster has pointed out that the Thomas Evans who,
in 1772, for publishing a libel was beaten by Gold-
smith, and returned .the blow with interest, " must
not be confounded with a worthy bookseller of the
same name, who first collected Goldsmith's writings."
Mr. Evans, of Pall Mall, whose Shadow I present,
had, says Mr. Nichols, " naturally a taste and a love
for literature ; and, as far as prudence would permit,
endeavoured to render his private propensity the
source of public advantage and public ornament."

If Thomas Evans had gained a reputation amongst
the judicious few by the republi cation of some writers
that had fallen into neglect, THOMAS PAYNE, of the
Mews-gate, was the medium, for forty years, of mak-
ing all books, new and old, English and foreign,
extensively known by the circulation of his annual
catalogues. His little shop acquired the name of
a Literary Coffee-house ; for there, rummaging over
his shelves, or glancing at the books upon his
counters, were to be found a succession of scholars
always eager to purchase at the very moderate
prices at which "honest Tom Payne" marked his
books. Mathias (if he, indeed, be the author of the
* Pursuits of Literature ') describes him as " that
Trypho emeritus, Mr. Thomas Payne, one of the
honestest men living, to whom, as a bookseller,
learning is under considerable obligations." The
character which Koger North gives of Robert Scot
of Little Britain may be applied to Thomas Payne
of the Mews-gate. "He was not only an expert
bookseller, but a very conscientious, good man." I

260 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. XII.

cannot continue the quotation as applied to Mr.
Payne : "When he threw up his trade, Europe
had no small loss of him." He had a worthy suc-
cessor in his eldest son, to whom he resigned his
business in 1790. Thomas Payne of Pall Mall
carried the reputation of his father into a grander
place of business than the original little shop in the
shape of an L.

The dynasty of LONGMAN, in Paternoster Kow,
seems to have endured for almost as many genera-
tions as the House of Brunswick. The surname is
to be found on the same title-pages as the names of
Jacob Tonson and Thomas Osborne, and the bap-
tismal name of Thomas has descended in the firm
as regularly as that of the four Georges. Nearly a
century and a half of uninterrupted prosperity and
reputation has crowned the labours of very few
mercantile houses. The first Thomas Longman was
succeeded by his nephew, whom we have seen
honourably associated with Dodsley and Millar in
the project of 'Johnson's Dictionary.' It is he of
the booksellers' club whose shadow I now trace
at the Chapter Coffee-house. Another member
of that club was ROBERT BALDWIN, whose name is
legion in the annals of bookselling. Whether the
Baldwins of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
can be traced back to the William Bauldwyn, or
Baldwin, of the time of Edward VI. and Elizabeth
I cannot affirm or deny. If their ancestor were the
printer who wrote a metrical version of Solomon's
Song, and to whom Thomas Sackville recommended

CHAP. XII. THE CHAPTER COFFEE-HOUSE. 261

a completion of his 'Mirrour for Magistrates,' the
Robert Baldwin of 1777 might well have been
stimulated to contend for the claim of some of the
early poets to appear in the Booksellers' Collection,
instead of being., as it was,

" The Monument of banish 'd Mindes."

I must complete in another chapter my shadows
of this parliament of old booksellers.

262 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. XIII.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE CHAPTER COFFEE-HOUSE (Concluded).

!OHN RIVINGTON and Sons hold their
state under the Bible and Crown, in
St. Paul's Churchyard, as did their prede-
cessor Charles very early in the century.
His name is associated, in 1725, with Lindsay's
translation of Mason's ' Vindication of the Church of
England.' Was the old bookseller incautiously sliding
into dissent when he published one of the earliest
works of George Whitefield, ' The Nature and Neces-
sity of a New Birth in Christ, a Sermon preached at
Bristol, in September, 1737 ' ? The young student
of Oxford, who, with his coadjutor Wesley, had, in
1736, to bear with being called Bible-moth and
Methodist, had gone forth to preach in the fields to
the most ignorant and debased. But Whitefield was
not then separated from the Church, in which he had
been ordained Deacon by Dr. Benson, Bishop of
Gloucester. After the publication, by Eivington,
of his earliest printed sermon, he went to America,
where he widely diffused the tenets of Methodism.
But he still belonged to the English Church, in
which he was ordained Priest in 1739.

Foote, in his little comedy of ' The Author,' which
appeared in 1757, makes a bookseller say to a candi-

CHAP. XIII. THE CHAPTER COFFEE-HOUSE. 263

date for publication, " I don't deal in the sermon way
now ; I lost money by the last I printed, for all 'twas
wrote by a Methodist." The printed effusions of
Methodism had thus, it would appear, become popular
in twenty years. But, by this time, John Rivington
sat beneath the Bible and Crown, and how well he
flourished under the auspices of orthodoxy may be
gathered from the enumeration of his dignities by Mr.
Nichols : " He carried on his business, universally
esteemed, for more than half a century ; and enjoyed
the especial patronage of the Clergy, particularly those
of the higher order. He was many years Bookseller
to the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge ;
a Governor of most of the Royal Hospitals; a
Member of the Court of Lieutenancy, and of the
Common Council; a Director of the Amicable
Society in Serjeant's Inn, and of the Union Fire-
office ; and an ancient Member of the Company of
Stationers, of which he was Master in 1775." John
Eivington must have been quite clear of the seductive
influences of Whitefielcl and Wesley, when, in 1752,
he published ' The Mischiefs of Enthusiasm and
Bigotry,' an Assize-sermon by the Rev. Richard
Hurd. Yes ! Enthusiasm was the word with which
the old race of the clergy assailed their supposed
enemies, and defended their own rich pluralities
after they had given up Jacobitism. The bete-noire
of half a century was the Methodist. Against the
sect did George Lavington, Bishop of Exeter, pour
out the vials of his satire in 1749. ' The Enthusiasm
of Methodists and Papists compared,' was a fertile
theme for fun. The earnestness which was at first
ridiculed came in time to be despised. The respect-

264 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. XIII.

able country clergyman, meddling little with the
affairs of his neighbours, kind after his fashion to
the poor, but rather opposed to the new notion of
Sunday Schools ; not given to hard-drinking and
fox-hunting as the satirist and caricaturist repre-
sented ; he nevertheless thought it a duty which he
owed to his cloth not to be disturbed in his habitual
repose by the rivalry of modern dissent. It was not
the old-fashioned Non-conformity, which had nearly
died out, but something new which had been engen-
dered in the very seat of orthodoxy, and might be
dangerous if it crept into the bosom of the Church.
It was not much to be feared, however, he thought,
as long as it was Dissent.

The example of George III., which banished
profligacy from the Court, had contributed to banish
gross and licentious manners from the Church. But
apathy had taken the place of indecorum, and it
was abundantly manifested in the pulpit oratory.
Dr. Campbell (the Irish Dr. Campbell) came to
London in 1775. He goes to the Temple Church ; —
"The sermon was preached by a Master of the
Society, a brother to Thurlow, the Attorney-General.
The discourse was the most meagre composition (on
our Saviour's temptation), and the delivery worse.
He stood like Gulliver stuck in the marrow-bone,
with the sermon (newspaper-like) in his hand, and
without grace or emphasis, he in slow cadence
measured it forth. In the evening I strolled to
Westminster Abbey, where I (being locked in) was
obliged to listen to a discourse still duller, and as ill
delivered." By way of contrast, he went on a Good
Friday to hear Dr. Dodd, " who is cried up as the

CHAP. XIII. THE CHAPTER COFFEE-HOUSE. 265

first preacher in London." Dr. Campbell says : —
" He reads better than he preaches ; for in the pulpit
he leans too much upon his notes, his eyes are
seldom off them, yet he uses the action of an
extempore delivery, which makes a jarring jumble.
His manner is infinitely superior to his matter, which
was a poor and unsuccessful attempt upon the
passions." Dodd had borrowed some of the weapons
of the Methodists to do battle against unbelief and
vice, but he could not wield them. He was a mere
actor — a sham. Goldsmith has an essay, full of good
sense, * On the English Clergy and Popular Preachers.'
Having noticed the discourses of those who, " fearing
to out-do their duty, leave it half done," he says : —
" Impressed with a sense of the truths he is about to
deliver, a preacher disregards the applause or the
contempt of his audience, and he insensibly assumes
a just and manly sincerity. With this talent alone
we see what crowds are drawn around enthusiasts,
even destitute of common sense ; what numbers
converted to Christianity! Folly may sometimes
set an example for wisdom to practise, and our
regular divines may borrow instruction from even
Methodists."

But something more embarrassing than the con-
tests between orthodoxy and dissent was arising
before the close of the century, to disturb the repose
of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge,
and their respectable booksellers in St. Paul's
Churchyard. Wilberforce and Hannah More and
the Clapham sect had succeeded in making a portion
of the Clergy " Evangelical." Sir James Stephen
has shown how these differed from the orthodox,

266 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. XIII.

"by defining an Orthodox clergyman as one who
held in dull and barren formality the very same
doctrines which the Evangelical held in cordial
prolific vitality." This distinction must have been
a source of great embarrassment to the worthy
booksellers of St. Paul's Churchyard, for when the
Church became divided into High and Low, half of
their old customers went over to a rival shop in
Piccadilly. Up to this evil time the Rivingtons
had half a century of prosperity. The country
clergyman invariably went to the Bible and Crown
for additions to his library. He took thither his
sermon to be printed at his own cost ; and if, after
a year or two, he found that the balance of the
account was greatly against him, he did not much
repine, for the judicious advice of the Orthodox house
had prevented him printing as many copies as there
were parishes in England.

An important announcement is made from the
Chair at the Chapter. Although an obstinate indi-
vidual, who shall be nameless, has refused his consent
that the Poems of Goldsmith shall be inserted in the
Collection (Shame! Shame!), difficulties have been
overcome as to the insertion of all the poetical works
of Gray. (Applause). All eyes are directed towards
Mr. JOHN MURRAY. This gentleman has an evident
struggle with his feelings ; but he succeeds in sup-
pressing his desire to unburthen his mind. What
was the cause of this slight excitement may be
collected from a brief colloquy, in 1778, recorded by
Boswell : " Somebody mentioned the Reverend Mr.
Mason's prosecution of Mr. Murray, the bookseller,
for having inserted in a collection of ' Gray's Poems '

CHAP. XIII. THE CHAPTER COFFEE-HOUSE. 267

only fifty lines, of which Mr. Mason had still the
exclusive property under the statute of Queen Anne ;
and that Mr. Mason had persevered, notwithstanding
his being requested to name his own terms of com-
pensation. Johnson signified his displeasure at Mr.
Mason's conduct yery strongly; but added, by way
of showing that he was not surprised at it, ' Mason 's
a Whig.' Mrs. Knowles (not hearing distinctly),
' What ! a prig, Sir ? ' JOHNSON, ' Worse, Madam ;
a Whig! But he is both!'" The feud between
Whiggeiy and the House of Murray might thus have
had a remote origin.

The gradual rise of a great monarchy out of a
petty principality, has other examples than that of
the House of Brandenburg. The sovereigns of the
bookselling world have, in this same way, had small
beginnings. I have in my portfolio a shop card of a
beginner in 1768, at the old sign of the Ship.

JOHN MURRAY (successor to Mr. Sandby),
Bookseller and Stationer,

At No. 32, over-against St. Dunstan's Church,
in Fleet Street,

London.

Sells all new Books and Publications. Fitts up Public
or Private Libraries in the neatest manner with Books of
the choicest Editions, the best Print, and the richest
Bindings.

Also,

Executes East India or foreign Commissions by an assort-
ment of Books and Stationery suited to the Market or
Purpose for which it is destined : all at the most reason-
able rates.

268 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. XIII.

The name of the first John Murray is honourably
associated with that of William Falconer, the author
of ' The Shipwreck.' The bookseller had been an
officer of marines ; the poet had been a common
sailor. They were both natives of Scotland. The
sailor gradually secured friends who recognised his
genius, and encouraged his desire to attain some
literary distinction. But he continued to bear the
hardships of a seaman's life. In 1762, he published
* The Shipwreck ; a Poem, in three Cantos. By a
Sailor.' How the friendship between Falconer and
Murray was originally formed, it is scarcely necessary
to enquire. That it was something warmer than a
common intimacy may be more than conjecture.
Murray was negotiating for the purchase of the
business of Mr. Sandby, which had been long estab-
lished in the Trade, retaining a good many old
customers; and he was to be ushered into public
notice by the publication of new editions of Lord
Lyttelton's ' Dialogues,' and of his ' History.'
Although he has little reason to doubt of success by
himself, he offers " Dear Will " to enter into company
with him. The conclusion is characteristic of that
honest spirit of self-reliance which has enabled the
commanders of the old "Ship" to avail themselves
of favouring gales, and to bear up against sudden
squalls, for nearly a century : — " If you entertain a
notion that the conjunction will suit you, advise me,
and you shall be assumed upon equal terms ; for I
write to you before the affair is finally settled ; not
that I shall refuse it if you don't concur (for I am
determined on the trial by myself) ; but that I think
it will still turn out better were we joined ; and this

CHAP. XIII. THE CHAPTER COFFEE-HOUSE. 269

consideration alone prompts me to write to you.
Many blockheads in the trade are making fortunes ;
and did we not succeed as well as they, I think it
must be imputed only to ourselves." Falconer, who
had been promoted to a pursership in 1764, seems
to have preferred the prospects of his profession.
He embarked at the end of 1769 on board the
" Aurora " frigate, bound for India, and was no more
heard of.

The last of the booksellers of Little Britain was
Edward Ballard, who succeeded his father, Samuel,
and died in 1796, at the age of eighty -eight, in
the same house in which he was born. There was
one present at the Chapter coffee-house, in 1777,
\vho lived to the age of ninety-three. THOMAS
BECKET was born in 1720. He was one of the
assistants of Andrew Millar; left him to become
one of the firm of Becket and De Hondt, who pub-
lished catalogues in 1761, and finally settled himself
as a publisher in Pall Mall. He is one of the few
booksellers who are mentioned in terms of warm
commendation by their authors. Becket was Sterne's
first publisher, and the great humourist speaks of
him with the same sort of kindly feeling as Gold-
smith uses towards Newbery. He saw many revo-
lutions of literary taste during his long acquaintance
with authorship. Sterne rushed at once into popu-
larity. After the publication of the first two volumes
of ' Tristram Shandy,' Gray speaks of the man, as well
as the book, being an object of admiration. " One
is invited to dinner where he dines a fortnight before-
hand. His portrait is done by Reynolds, and now

270 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. XIII.

engraving. Dodsley gives 7001. for a second edition,
and for two new volumes not yet written." Johnson,
who spoke of him as " the man Sterne," said in 1776,
" Nothing odd will do long ; ' Tristram Shandy ' did
not last." But this was one of Johnson's prejudiced
judgments. The last volumes of ' Tristram Shandy '
were published in 1767. The ' Sentimental Journey '
was published in 1768. In that year Sterne died.
A short time only had passed over when Johnson
disparaged his memory, and Goldsmith said he was
"a dull dog." Yorick was probably grown a little
out of fashion, when he could no longer set the table
in a roar ; but he has lasted, and will last, and will
even continue to be compared as a painter of character
with Shakspere and Cervantes. There was another
of Mr. Becket's authors who has passed into obscurity,
if not into contempt. No one believes now in the
genuineness of Ossian ; no one would now hesitate to
ask as Boswell asks, " What does Becket mean by the
Originals of Fingal, and other poems of Ossian,
which he advertises to have lain in his shop ? " An
excellent critic, Professor Craik, has pointed out
"that there was some small portion of truth mixed
up with Macpherson's deception." He adds : " The
Ossianic poetry, after all that has been said about
its falsehood of style and substance, as well as of
pretension, making it out to be thus a double lie,
must still have some qualities wonderfully adapted to
allure the popular taste." A furious controversy
long raged about Ossian ; but ten years after Mac-
pherson's forgeries there came a boy of seventeen,
who was also to be vilified as a forger, when he pro-

CHAP. XIII. THE CHAPTER COFFEE-HOUSE. 271

duced the poems of Thomas Rowley, a monk of the
fifteenth century. Seven years before the meeting
which I record, there sat down in the place where
the forty assembled, Thomas Chatterton, who wrote
to his mother : " I am quite familiar at the Chapter
coffee-house, and know all the geniuses there."
Amongst the geniuses there, did any of the neigh-
bouring booksellers ever come across this boy, with
hollow cheeks and piercing eyes, of whom it was
afterwards said, "He looked like a spirit?" It was a
terrible story, and it is fortunate for the reputation
of the Trade that he did not apply in his great need
to any one of note amongst the old booksellers, to be
cast aside after the fashion of Horace Walpole. One
of Mr. Becket's authors of a later date has written
of " Bristol's wizard stripling," calling him —

" The Boy whom once patrician pens adorn'd,
First meanly flatter'd, then as meanly scorn'd."

Becket, whose long experience would carry him
back to the days of the 'Dunciad,' could scarcely
expect such a ferment as Pope excited to be pro-
duced by the anonymous author of the 'Pursuits of
Literature.' But no doubt, as each successive Dia-
logue was advertised for publication from 1794 to
1797, some enraged dabbler in letters would come to
his shop to sneer or to threaten. Mr. Mathias has
written very few lines now worth remembering, with
the exception perhaps of his felicitous application of
the ancient fable to the Shaksperian commentators : —

" On Avon's banks I heard Action mourn,
By fell Black Letter Dogs in pieces torn."

272 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. XIII.

His notes are overlaid with learning, and his attacks
are too much coloured by party feeling. Yet, like
all works filled with personalities, this production was
successful, and old Mr. Becket had the glory of pub-
lishing twelve editions.

Amongst booksellers who decided upon poetry in
1777, there was one present who, as a publisher, was
to be the herald of a new era in literature. JOSEPH
JOHNSON is honourably connected with the fame of
Cowper. To one not familiar with Cowper's Corre-
spondence, it may seem difficult to understand how
he should have intrusted his first volume, containing
Table-talk, The Progress of Error, Truth, Expos-
tulation, to a Dissenter, whose " literary connexions,"
says his biographer, J. Aikin, " have lain in great
part among the free inquirers both on religious and
political topics." Johnson was the publisher of the
scientific writings of Priestley and the poetical works
of Darwin. The explanation of this difficulty shows
that eighty years ago there was a tolerant charity
amongst strict religionists — professors, as they called
themselves.

The Eev. John Newton, the great friend of Cowper,
had confided the publication of the Olney Hymns
to Joseph Johnson in 1779. Previous to their publi-
cation, Newton wrote to his great friend and patron
John Thornton, of Clapham, who had urged on the
work and borne all risks — " To you I entirely submit
the choice of the printer or bookseller. If it was a
matter of perfect indifference to you, I have had a
thought of my old friend Joseph Johnson, in St.
Paul's Churchyard. He printed my ' Narrative ' and

CHAP. XIII. THE CHAPTER COFFEE-HOUSE. 273

volume of ' Sermons ;' and though he is not a pro-
fessor, I believe him a man of honour and integrity."
Cowper was well satisfied to confide the whole matter
of the publication of his first volume of poems to
Newton, who took them to his " old friend in St.
Paul's Churchyard," and presented them to him
without asking any price for the copy.

The volume was thus advertised: "In the press
and speedily will be published in one volume octavo,
price three shillings, Poems by William Cowper, of
the Inner Temple, Esquire." Price three shillings !
This was remarkable in Joseph Johnson, for the
age of luxurious printing and high prices was
beginning : —

"With wire-wove hot-press'd paper's glossy glare,
Blind all the wise, and make the stupid stare."

The publisher of Cowper was an exception to his
brother publishers of that day, who were addressed
in these lines. Aikin says of him, " It is proper to
mention that his true regard for the interests
of literature rendered him an enemy to that typo-
graphical luxury which, joined to the necessary
increase of expense in printing, has so much
enhanced the price of new books as to be a
material obstacle to the indulgence of a laudable
and reasonable curiosity by the reading public."

But Johnson was not only " a man of honour and
integrity." He rendered those essential services to
Cowper as the poems passed through the press which
an intelligent publisher may afford to his author
without setting up a claim to be a man of letters.

T

274 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. XIII.

He suggested a few corrections in the first sheets —
a bold thing to do by a bookseller to a poet — and
Cowper took this interference with as much good
sense as good temper. He writes to Newton, July 7,
1781, "I had rather submit to chastisement now
than be obliged to undergo it hereafter. If Johnson,
therefore, will mark with a marginal Q those lines
that he or his object to, I will willingly retouch
them, or give a reason for my refusal."

It is pleasant to read how Cowper thought of his
publisher as an intelligent critic. On August 25,
1781, he writes to Newton : — " I forgot to mention
that Johnson uses the discretion my poetship has
allowed him with much discernment. He has sug-
gested several alterations, or rather marked several
defective passages, which I have corrected much to the
advantage of the poems. In the last sheet he sent me
he noted three such, all which I have reduced to bet-
ter order. In the foregoing sheet, I assented to some
of his criticisms in some instances, and chose to abide
by the original expression in others. Thus we jog on
together comfortably enough ; and perhaps it would
be well for authors in general if their booksellers,
when men of some taste, were allowed, though not
to tinker the work themselves, yet to point out
the flaws, and humbly to recommend an improve-
ment."

In the original edition of the Poems Newton's
name appears on the title-page as editor. He wrote
a Preface, or Introduction, highly complimentary
indeed, but alluding too distinctly to Cowper's
malady, and dwelling too exclusively upon the

CHAP. XIII. THE CHAPTER COFFEE-HOUSE. 275

religious character of the poems. Johnson strongly
urged Cowper not to let this preface stand. The
candid poet saw the judiciousness of this advice, and
wrote thus to the Kev. Mr. Unwin : — " It is possible,
after all, that my book may come forth without a
preface. Mr. Newton has written (he could, indeed,
write no other) a very sensible as well as a very
friendly one ; and it is printed. But the bookseller,
who knows him well, and esteems him highly, is
anxious to have it cancelled, and, with my consent
first obtained, has offered to negotiate that matter
with the author. He judges that, though it would
serve to recommend the volume to the religious, it
would disgust the profane, and that there is really
no need of any preface at all. I have found Johnson
a very judicious man on other occasions, and am
therefore willing that he should determine for me
upon this."

The preface was cancelled. Cowper, in deprecat-
ing any offence to Newton, pays another cordial
tribute to the merit of Johnson : — " I have reason to
be very much satisfied with my publisher. He
marked such lines as did not please him, and, as often
as I could, I paid all possible respect to his animad-
versions. You will accordingly find, at least if you
recollect how they stood in the MS., that several pass-
ages are the better for having undergone his critical
notice. Indeed, I do not know where I could have
found a bookseller who could have pointed out to me
my defects with more discernment ; and as I find it
is a fashion for modern bards to publish the names
of the literati who have favoured their works with a

276 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. XIII.

revisal, would myself most willingly have acknow-
ledged my obligations to Johnson, and so I told
him."

The bookseller of St. Paul's Churchyard did not,
after his first venture with Cowper, attain the cheap-
ness which he desired for his publications by a
niggardly payment for authorship. In 1786, the poet
writes to Lady Hesketh: "Johnson behaves very
handsomely in the affair of my two volumes. He
acts with a liberality not often found in persons
of his occupation, and to mention it, when occasion
calls me to it, is a justice due to him." It would
be difficult, amongst old booksellers or modern, to
find one of more liberality and judgment than Joseph
Johnson. He encouraged Fuseli in his design to
paint a * Milton Gallery,' to be published in imitation
of Boydell's ' Shakspeare.' The poems were to be
edited by Cowper, but his illness put an end to that
project ; yet Johnson subscribed, with five other
friends of Fuseli, to advance him a sum of money
till the paintings were completed. Johnson had to
bear the common fate of other right-minded men in
a season of political persecution. He was imprisoned
nine months in the King's Bench for selling the
political works of Gilbert Wakefield. He was
enabled to bear his confinement with equanimity ;
for he rented the Marshal's house, where he used to
give dinners to his literary friends, of whom he had
a large number of the most distinguished.

Let me say a word of the mischievous spirit — the
very Puck of booksellers — who has caused all this
commotion in the trade, JOHN BELL, of the Strand.

CHAP. XIII. THE CHAPTER COFFEE-HOUSE. 277

Leigh Hunt has described him, as he appeared early
in the present century, when he published ' Bell's
Weekly 3Iessenger :' — " He was a plain man, with a
red face, and a nose exaggerated by intemperance ;
and yet there was something not unpleasing in his
countenance, especially when he spoke. He had
sparkling black eyes, a good-natured smile, gentle-
manly manners, and one of the most agreeable voices
I ever heard. He had no acquirements, perhaps not
even grammar; but his taste in putting forth a
publication, and getting the best artists to adorn it,
was new in those times, and may be admired in
any."* This remarkable man, as Hunt calls him,
was not satisfied with producing his < British Poets,'
to invade " our literary property," but he sent forth
his 'British Theatre' to drive out of the market
the old octavo editions of single Plays, or the
cumbrous collections of the works of dramatic
authors, from Dryden and Farquhar to Thomson
and Colman. He published ' Shakespear,' also* in
small pocket volumes. His draughtsmen and en-
gravers were not selected for their cheapness, but
for their excellence. His love of innovation was
really awful Nichols (John Bowyer) records that
" Mr. Bell, in publishing his ' British Theatre,' first
set the fashion of discarding the long s." Worst of
all, he raised up a series of rivals and imitators,
who went upon the same principle of giving the
common reader nicely-printed small volumes, with
embellishments by first-rate artists. COOK, of Pater-
noster-row, was one of those who made a fortune

* ' Autobiography,' vol. i. p. 276.

278 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. XIII.

by this illegitimate business. Then came HAEKISOX,
with his ' British Novelists, in 100 volumes, illus-
trated by Stothard. I have a series of these charming
designs. What wealth of fancy; what fertility of
humour; what truth of characterization, do these
cheap embellishments present to me ! As I turn
over my two or three hundred little engravings, the
incidents which filled my young mind with wonder,
and the people over whose fortunes I once laughed
and cried, rise up once more, and Memory takes me
again over the old ground which Genius has covered
with its imperishable fruits and flowers. Eobinson
Crusoe is there, leaving the foundered ship, upon his
raft ; or building his boat, with his faithful Friday
assisting in the labour. Peter Wilkins (does any one
now read that delightful imitation of Defoe?) is at
the door of his lonely cabin, holding a lamp as he
gazes upon a woman with wings, lying upon the
ground as if dead ; — his tender and loving Yonwarkee.
Gulliver, in Lilliput, is pegged to the earth, whilst
diminutive beings are climbing by ladders up the
steep sides of the Man-mountain. Sir Launcelot
Greaves goes forth armed cap-d-pie, to redress the
evils of society ; but the modern knight, as delineated
by the artist, is not to be compared to the Knight of
La Mancha. Motteux's translation of Cervantes, and
Stothard's designs, would make me well content to
renew my acquaintance with the adventure of the
Windmills, and with Sancho, the governor of Bara-
taria; even though Dickens or Thackeray were at
hand, to wile away a long winter evening. I pass
over the Grandison and the Clarissa (with costumes

CHAP. XIII. THE CHAPTER COFFEE-HOUSE. 279

slightly modernized as compared with the original
plates), to converse as familiarly as of old with Pere-
grine Pickle, Commodore Trunnion, and Tom Pipes.
But more prized even than these worthies are Gil Bias,
in the Robber's Cave ; and Asmodeus, that marvellous
little figure upon crutches, which genius only could
have conceived. But whither am I wandering?
I would fain linger over the immortal Uncle Toby
and the Widow, or weep with the Cook and the
Scullion, as Corporal Trim drops his hat upon
the ground to point the moral of the story of Le
Fevre. But this dallying with pleasant recollections
must not be. I must close my portfolio, and say no
more about the cheap publishers of popular works
eighty years ago, beyond expressing my conviction
that they had right notions of Art for the multitude.

280 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. XIII.

NOTE.

The following lists of names are those which appear as the
associated publishers of the first and second editions of Johnson's
Poets. They furnish a curious record of the ruling sovereigns
in the realms of print in 1779, and of the dynastic changes that
the lapse of eleven years had produced.

1779. First Edition,
C. BATHTRST.

J. BUCKLAND.

W. STRAHAN.

J. KIVINGTON & SONS.

T. DAVIES.

T. PAYNE.

L. DAVIS.

W. OWEN.

B. WHITE.

S. CROWDER.

T. CASLON.

T. LONGMAN.

B. LAW.

E. & C. DlLLT.
J. DODSLET.

H. BALDWIN.
J. WILKIE.

J. KOBSON.

J. JOHNSON.
T. LOWNDES.
T. BECKET.
G. KOBINSON.
T. CADELL.
W, DAVIS.
J. NICHOLS.
J. NEWBERT.
T. EVANS.

J. KlDLET.

K. BALDWIN.

1790. Second Edition.

J. BTTCKLAND.

J. KrviNGTON & SONS.

T. PAYNE & SONS.
S. DAVIS.

B. WHITE & SON.

T. LONGMAN.

B. LAW.

C. DlLLY.
J. DODSLEY.

H. BALDWIN.

J. EOBSOST.
J- JOHNSON.
WILLIAM LOWNDES.

G. G. J. & J. KOBINSON.
T. CADELL.

J. NICHOLS.
J. NEWBERY.
T. EVANS.

K. BALDWIN.

CHAP. XIII. THE CHAPTER COFFEE-HOUSE.

281

1779. First Edition,

G. NICOL.

LEIGH & SOTHEBY.

J. BEW.

N. CONANT.

J. MURRAY.
W. Fox.

J. BOWEN.

Printed by JOHN NICHOLS.

1790. Second Edition.

G. NICOL.

LEIGH & SOTHEBY.

J. BEW.

N. CONANT.

J. MURRAY.
W. Fox.
H. L. GARDNER.
P. ELMSLEY.
J. SEWELL.
W. GOLDSJIITH.

W. KlCHARDSON.

T. VERNOR.
W. BENT.
W. OTKIDGE.
T. & J. EDGERTON.
S. HAYES.
K. FAULDER.
J. EDWARDS.
G. & T. WILKIE.
W. NICOLL.
OGILVY & SPEEH.

SCATCHARD & WHITAKER.

C. STALKER.

282 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. XIV.

CHAPTER XIV.

JAMES LACKINGTON.

HEN I was about ten years old, my father
took me to London for a short holiday.
He had business to transact with book-
sellers, of whom I remember Messrs.
Robinson, of Paternoster Row, and Mr. Wingrave,
of the Strand, for whom he printed the ' French
Grammar,' and other works of M. Porny. The dingy
warehouses of the great marts of literature did not
attract much of my curiosity. But my father had a
sight in reserve for me, almost as remarkable as Saint
Paul's or Mrs. Salmon's waxwork. I went with him
to "The Temple of the Muses." The building was
burnt down some years ago, but I have engravings
which assist my recollection of what I saw in 1801.

At one of the corners of Finsbury Square, which
was built in 1789, there was a block of houses which
had been adapted to the purposes of a great shop or
warehouse, and presented an imposing frontage.
A dome rises from the centre, on the top of which a
flag is flying. This royal manifestation (now become
common to suburban public-houses), proclaims that
this is no ordinary commercial establishment. Over
the principal entrance is inscribed, " Cheapest Book-
sellers in the World." It is the famous shop of

CHAP. XIV. JAMES LACKINGTON. 283

Lackington, Allen, and Co., " where above Half a
Million of Volumes are constantly on Sale." We enter
the vast area, whose dimensions are to be measured
by the assertion that a coach and six might be driven
round it. In the centre is an enormous circular
counter, within which stand the dispensers of know-
ledge, ready to wait upon the country clergyman,
in his wig and shovel-hat; upon the fine ladies, in
feathers and trains ; or upon the bookseller's collector,
with his dirty bag. If there is any chaffering about
the cost of a work, the shopman points to the
following inscription : " The lowest price is marked
on every Book, and no abatement made on any
article." We ascend a broad staircase, which leads to
" The Lounging Rooms," and to the first of a series
of circular galleries, lighted from the lantern of the
dome, which also lights the ground floor. Hundreds,
even thousands, of volumes are displayed on the
shelves running round their walls. As we mount
higher and higher, we find commoner books, in
shabbier bindings ; but there is still the same order
preserved, each book being numbered according to
a printed catalogue. This is larger than that of any
other bookseller's, and it comes out yearly. The
formation of such an establishment as this assumes a
remarkable power of organization, as well as a large
command of capital. I daresay I wearied nay father
with questions about this wonderful Mr. Lackington,
marvelling how rich he must have been ; how learned !
He might have answered my enquiries by showing
me a very common print with this inscription:
" J. Lackington, who a few years since began Book-

284 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. XIV.

selling with five pounds, now sells one hundred
thousand volumes yearly; or, the Cobbler turned
Bookseller." A year or two later, my desire 'for
information was abundantly satisfied by the perusal
of a book entitled ' Memoirs of the forty-five first
years of the Life of James Lackington, the present
Bookseller in Chiswell Street, Moorfields, London,
written by himself, in Forty-seven Letters to a
Friend.' This autobiography was originally pub-
lished in 1791, before " The Temple of the Muses "
had been inaugurated. I perhaps did a little in-
justice to the character of this book in once de-
scribing it as "that farrago of sense and absurdity."
There is certainly a good deal of nonsense to be
found in it, but the real information which it contains,
and the curious picture which it presents of the
struggles of a young man, almost without the rudi-
ments of knowledge, and miserably poor, to become
rich and famous in the annals of bookselling, require
a careful and candid exposition.

James Lackington was born at Wellington, in
Somersetshire, in 1746. His father, George Lacking-
ton, was a journeyman shoemaker. The name, I am
informed, is not yet extinct in that town and neigh-
bourhood. His mother was an honest and industrious
woman; his father an habitual drunkard. Their
poverty was such, under the father's idleness and
improvidence, that the mother could not afford to
pay two pence a week for the little boy's schooling.
His superfluous energy expended itself in all sorts of
mischief, till his commercial talent was developed in
his employment by a baker, to cry and sell apple

CHAP. XIV. JAMES LACKINGTON. 285

pies about the streets. His first steps iu the paths of
bookselling are thus described: "During the time
that I lived with the baker, my name became so
celebrated for selling a large number of pies, puddings,
&c., that for several years following, application was
made to my father for him to permit me to sell
Almanacks a few market days before and after
Christmas. In this employ I took great delight,
the country people being highly pleased with me,
and purchasing a great number of my almanacks,
which excited envy in the itinerant venders of Moore,
Wing, Poor Kobin, &c., to such a degree, that my
father often expressed his anxiety lest they 'should
some way or other do me a mischief. But I had not
the least concern ; for, possessing a light pair of heels,
I always kept at a proper distance. O, my friend,
little did I imagine at that time, that I should ever
excite the same poor mean spirit in many of the
booksellers of London and other places."

When Lackington was fourteen years and a half
old, he was apprenticed to a shoemaker at Taunton,
who was an Anabaptist. He went regularly with
the family to the meeting, but he had no idea that
he had the least concern in what the minister
was preaching about. His master's sons having
become converted to Methodism by one of Mr.
Wesley's preachers, there were perpetual contro-
versies between the mother and her children. Their
arguments and discourses, he says, " made me think
they knew many matters of which I was totally
ignorant. This created in me a desire for knowledge,
that I might know who was right and who was

286 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. XIV.

wrong. But, to my great mortification, I could
not read. I knew most of the letters and a few
easy words, and I set about learning with all my
might." He could soon read the easy parts of
he Bible and Wesley's hymns. " I had such good
eyes that I often read by the light of the moon,
as my master would never permit me to take a candle
into my room." I shall not attempt to follow his
descriptions of the Methodist organisation, and of
his own experiences from the time of his conversion,
when about sixteen years of age, to his twenty-first
year, when, he says, " I was a sincere enthusiast."
One passage presents an accurate picture of what was
going on throughout the countiy : " Instead of
hearing the sensible and learned ministers of Taunton,
I would often go four, five, or six miles, to some
country village, to hear an inspired husbandman, shoe-
maker, blacksmith, or woolcomber; and frequently
in frost and snow have I rose a little after midnight
(not knowing what time of night it was) and have
wandered about the town until five o'clock, when
the preaching began; where I have often heard a
sermon preached to not more than ten or a dozen
people."

When Lackington had grown into manhood he
obtained employment as a journeyman shoemaker
at Bristol. At this time he could not write, yet
he composed songs, which, being printed, the ballad-
singers sang about Bristol streets. He had now
acquired a taste for general reading. He and a friend
had a little spare money to lay out in books, but
they were ashamed to go into the booksellers' shops.

CHAP. XIV. JAMES LACKIXGTOX. 287

At last they purchased, at a stall in Bristol Fair,
Hobbes's translation of Honier. Those who have
looked into that most wonderful specimen of the
great philosopher's capacity for poetry, will easily
conceive that the young shoemakers found crabbed
Homer very difficult to read. They got together
some few readable books. " What we wanted in
judgment in choosing our library we made up
in application ; so anxious were we to read a great
deal that we allowed ourselves but three hours'
sleep in the twenty-four." Going to work at
Kingsbridge, his master expressed his surprise that
he should employ the pens of others to write his
letters; and thus he began to teach himself to
write. In 1770 he married. His wife was always
out of health, so he resolved to move to London,
where he could get a better price for his work.
Poor they were indeed, for the wife's sickness allowed
little to be saved out of the husband's earnings.
At last his grandfather in the country left him
a legacy of ten pounds. If any one should still
think that the means of the humbler classes have not
been materially improved by the spread of the know-
ledge of common things and the facilities of modern
civilisation, let them read the following paragraph :
" So totally unacquainted was I with the modes of
transacting business that I could not point out any
method of having my ten pounds sent up to London ;
at least, no mode that the executor of the will would
approve of; it being such a prodigious sum that
the greatest caution was used on both sides, so
that it cost me about half the money in going down

288 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. XIV.

for it, and in returning to town again." With the
remainder of his ten pounds he purchased a few
household goods. Whilst he and his poor sick wife
were working in their humble room, one of 3Ir.
Wesley's people called, and informed him that there
was a shop and parlour to be let in Featherstone-
street, and if he were to take it, he might there get
some work as a master. Lackington liked the idea,
and hinted that he would sell books as well as shoes.
When his friend asked how he came to think of
selling books, he said that, for several months past,
he had observed a great increase in a certain old
book shop. He was persuaded that he knew as
much of books as the person who kept it ; and that
if he could but be a bookseller he should have plenty
of books to read. So with some odd scraps of leather,
and with books that he had got together, worth about
five pounds, he increased his capital by borrowing
five pounds out of a fund which Mr. Wesley's people
kept to lend out. Thus, he says, " notwithstanding
the obscurity of the street, and the mean appearance
of my shop, yet I soon found customers for what few
books I had, and I as soon laid out the money in
other old trash which was daily brought for sale."
He soon moved his stock, worth about twenty-five
pounds, to Chiswell-street, and a few weeks after
bade a final adieu to the gentle craft.

The bookseller of Chiswell Street, when he was
about thirty years of age, married a second time ; his
first wife having died of a fever. He also took
another decided step. He quitted the Wesleyan
society. He appears to have been rather ungrateful

CHAP. XIV. JAMES LACKIXGTOX. 289

to his old friends, whom he calls " old women," and
he became proud of following examples of the incom-
patability of bookselling with enthusiastic religious
feelings. "Mr. Wesley told his society in Broadmead,
Bristol, in my hearing, that he could never keep
a bookseller six months in his flock.0 Lackington
had now found a most valuable assistant in his wife ;
" her extreme love for books " making her delight to
be in the shop. He obtained also a partner of
another character, a capitalist, who enabled him
greatly to extend his business, but they differed upon
the principle upon which it should be conducted.
"I was for selling everything cheap, in order to
secure those customers already obtained, as well as
increase their numbers." After two years they
separated, but continued good friends. Left to his
own guidance, Lackington adopted a principle of
business which manifests his (Sfnimercial sagacity.
" It was some time in the year 1780 when I resolved
from that period to give no person whatever any
credit." He was convinced that if he could but
establish a ready-money business, without any excep-
tions, he should be enabled to sell every article very
cheap. He marked in every book, facing the title,
the lowest price he would take for it. He denied
credit to his nearest acquaintance. The rank or
respectability of a customer formed no exception.
If the books he sent home, even to a nobleman's
house, were not paid for on delivery, his porter was
to bring the parcel back. The principles of ready-
money and small stock have been the foundations of
great fortunes in more recent times. Tapes and

u

290 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. XIV.

ribbons bought and sold upon these principles made
a millionnaire not far from Chiswell Street; but
Lackington could only pursue one of these roads to
fortune. He was compelled, as every bookseller
must be, to keep a large stock. Nothing but the
most unremitting vigilance could have enabled him
to contend against this disadvantage. He describes
his constant accumulation of stock ; his large pur-
chases at trade sales, such as two hundred, three
hundred, five hundred copies of a book. The first
Napoleon has been called " the child and champion
of Jacobinism." Lackington was the champion of
ultra-Jacobinism in the book trade. His revolutionary
doings must have carried consternation into the
Chapter. "When first invited to these trade sales,
I was very much surprised to learn that it was
common for such as purchased remainders to destroy
one half or three fdftrths of such books, and to charge
the full publication price, or nearly that, for such as
they kept on hand ; and there was a kind of standing
order amongst the trade, that in case any one was
known to sell articles under the publication price,
such a person was to be excluded from trade sales;
so blind were copyright-holders to their own interest."
The Chiswell Street innovator having for a little
while cautiously complied with this custom, at length
"resolved not to destroy any books which were worth
saving, but to sell them off at half or a quarter of the
publication prices." Of course he was reviled ; his
ruin was prognosticated ; the doors of the trade sale
rooms were shut against him. But this could last
only a little while. The dams by which this flood of

CHAP. XIV. JAMES LACKINGTON. 291

a natural and truly legitimate trade was attempted
to be stopped, were very soon broken down. There
were plenty of indirect modes of supplying him with
"remainders." "By selling them in this cheap
manner, I have disposed of many hundred thousand
volumes, many thousands of which have been in-
trinsically worth their original prices." Customers
of all ranks flocked to his shop. It is something
higher than the complacency of egotism when he
boasts of having thus enabled numbers in inferior
situations of life to indulge their natural propensity
for the acquisition of knowledge on easy terms. He
was in advance of his time when he wrote : "I could
almost be vain enough to assert, that I have thereby
been highly instrumental in diffusing that general
desire for reading, now so prevalent among the
inferior orders of society; which most certainly,
though it may not prove equally instructive to all,
keeps them from employing their time and money, if
not to bad, at least to less rational purposes." Ke-
viled and discountenanced by the trade at first, the
cheap bookseller soon was supplied with abundant
materials for carrying on his system. "Being uni-
versally known for making large purchases, most of
the trade in town and country, and also authors of
every description, are continually furnishing me with
opportunities." He was still, however, a subject for
the finger of Scorn to point at, even when he had
such a command of capital that great publishers no
longer stood upon their false and antiquated
principles of political economy. He says : " As the
first king of Bohemia kept his country shoes by him,

u2

292 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. XIV.

to remind him from whence he was taken, I have put
a motto on the doors of my carriage, constantly to
remind me to what I am indebted for my prosperity,

viz. : —

SMALL PROFITS DO GREAT THINGS."

That carriage was scarcely to be forgiven by his
detractors. I have a caricature, in which a grinning
assembly, holding up their hands in wonder, stare upon
the fortunate cobbler as he mounts upon a pile of
books to step into his smart vehicle, drawn up in
front of the Temple of the Muses.

It was a matter of surprise, as Lackington in-
forms us, how he acquired any tolerable degree of
knowledge, so as to form any idea of the merits
of books, or how he became acquainted with the
ordinary prices that books, especially foreign, were
sold for. He affirms that he always wrote his own
catalogues. He learnt enough French to make out
and abridge title-pages, and contented himself with
reading all the translations of the Classics, inserting
the original titles in his catalogues, as well as he
could. There is a humourous frankness in what
he adds : — " When sometimes I happened to put the
genitive or dative case, instead of the nominative
or accusative, my customers kindly considered this
as a venial fault which they readily pardoned, and
bought the books notwithstanding." He had customers
in all grades of society — learned and unlearned, rich
and poor. He came at a time when the desire
for knowledge was extending, as the means of
gratifying that desire were constantly increasing.
Cause aiid effect were here blended. Demand

CHAP. XIV. JAMES LACKINGTON. 293

increased supply, and supply increased demand.
In 1791, Lackington says that, according to the
best estimate he had been able to make, more than
four times the number of books were sold then
than were sold twenty years before. He speaks
also of the formation of book-clubs in every part
of England. He had the sense to perceive what
effects would be produced by circulating libraries.
" I have been informed that, when circulating
libraries were first opened, the booksellers were
much alarmed, and their rapid increase added to
their fears, and led them to think that the sale
of books would be much diminished by such libraries.
But experience has proved that the sale of books,
so far from being diminished by them, has been
greatly promoted." The food provided at these
repositories was not always of the highest character.
Lackington says that he has been told of booksellers
who frequently offer as low as half-a-guinea per
volume for novels in manuscript. Of Mr. William
Lane, who died in 1814, at the age of seventy-six,
Mr. Bowyer Nichols says : " He was long dis-
tinguished for his numerous publications of novels,
and for the energy with which he established circu-
lating libraries in almost every town in the kingdom/'
Wonderful productions were those of the Minerva
press, which had superseded for a while by their
decorum, their insipidity, and their really low
morality, the outspoken words of the great novelists
of the middle of the century. The chief supporters
of the circulating libraries have a good word from
Lackington. English ladies, he said, now in general

294 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLEES. CHAP. XIV.

not only read novels but the best books in the
English language : " There are some thousands of
ladies, which come to my shop, that know as well
what books to choose, and are as well acquainted
with works of taste and genius, as any gentleman in
the kingdom, notwithstanding the sneer against novel
readers."

There were not many of the old booksellers, I fear,
who thought with Lackington that the spread of
Sunday Schools would "accelerate the diffusion of
knowledge among the lower classes of the community,
and in a very few years exceedingly increase the
sale of books." In the same way, when much more
effectual means of popular education had grown out
of the humble Sunday Schools, there were very few
of the successors of the old booksellers who could
believe that the returns and the profits of cheap
publications would be twenty-fold those of books for
the rich and luxurious. If the London booksellers
in Lackington's time were afraid of low prices, how
much more would the country booksellers dread this
disturbance of their old habits of business. He gives
us little information about their dealings in new
works ; but it was not likely to be very extensive, if
we may judge from his account of the provincial
trade in old books. In 1787, he set off from London
to Edinburgh, and was led from motives of curiosity,
as well as with the view of making some valuable
purchases, to examine the booksellers' shops. His
disappointment is thus related: "Although I went
by the way of York, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, &c., and
returned through Glasgow, Carlisle, Leeds, Lancaster,

CHAP. XIV. JAMES LACKIXGTOX. 295

Preston, Manchester, and other considerable places,
I was much surprised, as well as disappointed, at
meeting with very few of the works of the most
esteemed authors, and those few consisted in general
of ordinary editions, besides an assemblage of common
trifling books, bound in sheep, and that too in a very
bad manner. It is true, at York and Leeds there
were a few (and but very few) good books ; but in all
the other towns between London and Edinburgh
nothing but trash was to be found : in the latter city,
indeed, a few capital articles are kept, but in no other
part of Scotland." He repeated his journey in 1790,
with the same results ; and he found no exception to
his complaint in the West of England. London was
"the grand emporium of Great Britain for books,
engrossing nearly the whole of what is valuable in
that very extensive, beneficial, and lucrative branch
of trade."

Here I take leave of this remarkable man, who did
not wholly quit business till 1798. He returned to
the Wesleyan connexion, built and endowed three
chapels, and died in 1815, at the age of seventy.
Like most self-raised men, he was proud of his
humble origin, when he exhibited the grandeur of
his altered circumstances. The following passage, of
the date of 1791, is characteristic: "In Bristol,
Exbridge, Bridgewater, Taunton, Wellington, and
other places, I amused myself in calling on some of
my masters, with whom I had about twenty years
before worked as a journeyman shoemaker. I ad-
dressed each with 'Pray, Sir, have you got any
occasion ?' which is the term made use of by journey-

296 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. XIV.

men in that useful occupation when seeking employ-
ment, Most of these honest men had quite forgotten
my person, as many of them had not seen me since I
worked for them ; so that it is not easy for you to
conceive with what surprise and astonishment they
gazed on me. For you must know that I had the
vanity (I call it humour) to do tin's in my chariot,
attended by my servants ; and on telling them who I
was, all appeared to be very happy to see me."

A short time before the death of the fortunate
bookseller of Finsbury Square, died WILLIAM
GARDINER, bookseller, of Pall Mall. The character
and career of this man, his various talents, his taste
and knowledge, his eccentricity, his misery, and its
wretched termination, present such a contrast to
James Lackington, that they may fitly come together
in this concluding chapter. Gardiner committed
suicide on the 8th of May, 1814. On the day before
he died, he sent a memoir of himself to a friend.
This short autobiography appeared in a newspaper of
the time ; and of this I have a cutting accompanying
the unfortunate man's portrait. It is a face of re-
markable intelligence and refinement. The inscrip-
tion under this pleasing representation is, " Celebrated
by the Eev. Mr. Dibdin, in his ' Bibliomania,' under
the character of Mustapha." I give an extract from
that character, drawn by one who had manifestly
received some offence from the imprudent frequenter
of book auctions : " He comes forth like an alchemist
from his laboratory, with hat and wig ' sprinkled with
learned dust,' and deals out his censures with as little

CHAP. XIV. JAMES LACKIXGTOX. 297

ceremony as correctness. It is of no consequence to
him by whom positions are advanced, or truth is
established. * * * Our book-vender, in the catalogues
which he puts forth, shows himself to be a great and
bold ' carpenter of words ; ' overcharging the descrip-
tion of his own volumes with tropes, metaphors,
nourishes, and common-place authorities, the latter of
which one would think had but recently come under
his notice, as they had been already before the public
in various less ostentatious forms." * Lackington
had no itch for setting forth his knowledge in his
catalogues. He was a shrewd tradesman. Poor
Gardiner was a man of genius. He early manifested
a taste for drawing; and having come to London,
became an engraver. In this profession he was suc-
cessful, and engraved many plates with the name of
Bartolozzi affixed to them. Some publishers were
not very scrupulous as to this species of deception.
Gardiner says, " I believe I was inferior only to Barto-
lozzi, Schiavonetti, and Tomkins of that day; but
I never liked the profession of engraving. Gay,
volatile, and lively as a lark, the process of the copper
never suited me. Under propitious circumstances,
my talents would have led me, perhaps, as an
historical painter, to do something worth remem-
brance." He at length abandoned the profession of
an engraver. One of his eyes, by incautious exposure,
having become inflamed, never recovered its strength.
"This," he says, "has been the cause of all my subse-
quent endeavours to get a living in other lines."

* ' Bibliomania,' p. 122.

298 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS. CHAP. XIV.

He now, by the kindness of Dr. Farmer, was admitted
to Emanuel College, Cambridge, and, removing to
Bene't, became the Fifth Senior Optime. He was five
years dangling after a fellowship, but without success.
He then returned to London, and attained eminence
in copying oil portraits in water colours. Another
change of occupation — and then the end. He
"perished in his pride."

Melancholy, indeed, is the record of this unhappy
man's career as a London bookseller. But the story
of misfortune, and the story of success, are equally
instructive. " All prospects in the church vanishing,
and my eyes beginning to fail very fast, I turned
bookseller, and for the last thirteen years have
struggled in vain to establish myself. The same ill
fortune which has followed me through life, has not
here forsaken me. I have seen men on every side of
me, greatly my inferiors in every respect, towering
above me; while the most contemptible amongst
them, without education, without a knowledge of their
profession, and without an idea, have been received
into palaces, and into the bosom of the great, while
I have been forsaken and neglected, and my business
reduced to nothing. It is, therefore, high time for
me to be gone." Mr. Bowyer Nichols (who prints,
in his 'Illustrations of Literary History,' the news-
paper memoir which I have quoted) does justice to
the memory of this unfortunate bookseller. He had
married an interesting and well-educated woman with
some fortune, but his wife and child dying, he became
regardless of appearances, and sank into the slovenly
Mustapha that Dibdin has described. His shop was

CHAP. XIV. JAMES LACKINGTON. 299

ill-kept ; the curious volumes upon his shelves were
always dirty and ill-arranged ; the ordinary civilities
to Iris customers were put aside. Though men of
learning and literary celebrity came there to profit
by his various knowledge, and to enjoy his brilliant
conversation, he had not the art of making money by
buying and selling, as the unlearned man had, who,
in copying titles, mistook the dative for the accusative
case. Following an intellectual occupation, he did
not perceive that qualities for the working day were
necessary to make a prosperous tradesman.

( 301 )

APPENDIX.

THE following is a reprint, without alteration, of an
article written by the author of this volume in 1834,
and published in a monthly periodical called ' The
Printing Machine.' It contains some general views of
the progress of Printing and Bookselling in England
which may illustrate some of the details of the preceding
pages. The date of this paper must be borne in mind
by the reader of thirty years later : —

THE MAEKET OF LITERATURE.

THEBE was an ingenious gentleman in the seventeenth century
who was greatly alarmed lest the breed of horses should be
annihilated in England, by the introduction of public convey-
ances. The people that were accustomed to ride " their good
pad-nags " wickedly preferred, he says, the smaller cost of making
their journeys in the stage-coaches " that go to almost every
town within twenty or twenty-five miles of London, at very low
rates ; so that," he adds, " by computation, there are not so
many horses, by 10,000, kept now in these parts, as there were
before stage-coaches set up."

It would be very easy now, by computation, to show that the
establishment of public carriages has multiplied the breed of
horses fifty-fold more than it would have multiplied, had the
rich only continued to use horses. But that is not our present
business. What the worthy encourager of travelling maintained
would happen, and, indeed, had happened, by the extension of
the advantages of travelling from the few to the many, a con-
siderable number of the worthy encouragers of knowledge
maintain will happen, and, indeed, has happened, by a similar
extension of the benefits of knowledge. They show, by compu-

302 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS.

tation, that the breed of books has deteriorated — that the market
for books is narrowed — and that " there are not so many books,
by 10,000, used now in these parts, as there were before books
for all, at very low rates, were set up." The complaint may be
just ; but we shall take the liberty of investigating its correctness
with a care proportioned to the alleged magnitude of the evil.

To conduct this investigation upon data that may be satisfac-
tory to ourselves and our readers, we must open a very wide field
of inquiry. It embraces the literary history, not only of England,
but of every other country where books are printed. The subject
is a most interesting one ; but its facts are to be sought for in
barren and thorny places. In the present paper we can only
bring together some of the more striking results which lie upon
the surface. It is possible that we may occasionally devote some
other papers to particular branches of the inquiry. In the mean
time this preliminary view will, if we mistake not, establish one
great truth — that at every step of the diffusion of knowledge,
from the first slow efforts of the rude Printing Press of 1460, to
the last rapid workings of the Printing Machine of 1833, the
foundations of the prosperity, the independence, and the con-
sequent excellence of literature, have been deepened and widened ;
and the condition of every labourer and chapman in the market
of literature successively ameliorated. If we do not show this
by computation, we shall be content to believe, for the rest of our
lives, that good horses and good books will never appear again in
England ; and that, as the Bristol mail is the destruction of
travelling, so the ' Penny Cyclopaedia ' is the destruction of lite-
rature. We are not obstinate.

We may probably simplify this large subject, by determining
to confine this introductory paper to the progress of printing iu
England, and by dividing this progress into five periods, viz : —

I. From 1471 (the introduction of printing by Caxton) to

the accession of James I., 1603.
II. From 1603 to the Revolution, 1688.

III. From 1688 to the accession of George III., 1760.

IV. From 1760 to 1800.
V. From 1800 to 1833.*

* I omit this latter period, which does not belong to the subject
of the " Old Booksellers."

APPENDIX. 303

I. It is a remarkable characteristic of the first century of
printing, not only in this country but wherever a press was
erected, that the highest and most constant efforts of the new art
were addressed to the diffusion of the old stores of knowledge,
rather than to an enlargement of the stores. The early pro-
fessors of the art on the continent, — in Germany, Italy, and
France, — were scholars who knew the importance of securing the
world's inheritance of the knowledge of Greece and Rome from
any further destruction, such as the scattered manuscripts of the
ancient poets, and orators, and historians had experienced,
through neglect and ignorance. The press would put them
fairly beyond the reach of any new waste. But after the first
half century of printing, when these manuscripts had been copied
in type, and the public libraries and the princes and nobles of
Europe had been supplied, a fresh want arose out of the satisfac-
tion of the former want. Men of letters, who did not belong to
the class of the rich, anxiously demanded copies of the ancient
classics, and their demands were not made in vain. The Alduses,
and Stephenses, and Plantins, did not hold it good to keep books
dear for the advancement of letters ; they anxiously desired to
make them cheap ; and they produced, therefore, not expensive
folios only, as their predecessors had done, but neat and com-
pactly printed octavos and duodecimos, for the general market.
The instant that they did this, the foundations of literature were
widened and deepened. They probably at first overrated the
demand ; indeed, we know they did so — and they suffered in
consequence. But the time was sure to come when their labours
would be rewarded ; and, at any rate, they were at once placed
beyond a servile dependence upon patrons. When they had their
customers in every great city and university, they did not wait
for the approving nod of a pope or a cardinal before they began to
print.

A new demand very soon followed upon the first demand for
cheap copies of the ancient classics ; and this was even more
completely the demand of the people. The doctrines of the
Reformation had proclaimed the Bible as the best spiritual guide
and teacher, — and the people would have Bibles. The first
English Bible was bought up and burnt ; those who bought the
Bibles contributed capital for making new Bibles, and those who
burnt the Bibles advertised them. The first printers of the Bible

304 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS.

were, however, cautious — they did not see the uumber of readers
upon which they were to rely for a sale. In 1540 Grafton
printed but 500 copies of his complete edition of the Scriptures ;
and yet, so great was the rush to this new supply of the most
important knowledge, that we have existing 326 editions of the
English Bible, or parts of the Bible, printed between 1526 and
1600.

The early English printers did not attempt what the con-
tinental ones were doing for the ancient classics. Down to 1540
no Greek book had appeared from an English press. Oxford had
only printed a part of Cicero's Epistles ; Cambridge, no ancient
writer whatever : — only three or four old Roman writers had
been reprinted, at that period, throughout England. But a great
deal was done for public instruction by the course which our
early printers took ; for, as one of them says — " Divers famous
clerks and learned men translated and made many noble works
into our English tongue, whereby there was much more plenty
and abundance of English used than there was in times past."
The English nobility were, probably, for more than the first half
century of English printing, the great encouragers of our press : —
they required translations and abridgments of the classics —
versions of French and Italian ' romances — old chronicles, and
helps to devout exercises. Caxton and his successors abundantly
supplied these wants ; and the impulse to most of their exertions
was given by the growing demand for literary amusement on the
part of the great. Caxton, speaking of his ' Boke of Eneydos,'
says — " This present book is not for a rude uplandish man to
labour therein, nor read it ; but only for a clerk and a noble
gentleman, that feeleth and understandeth in feats of arms, in
love, and in noble chivalry." But a great change was working
in Europe ; the " rude uplandish man," if he gave promise of
talent, was sent to school. The priests strove with the laity for
the education of the people ; and not only in Protestant, but in
Catholic countries were schools and universities everywhere
founded. Here, again, was a new source of employment for the
press — A. B. C.'s or Absies, Primers, Catechisms, Grammars,
Dictionaries, were multiplied in ev.ery direction. Books became,
also, during this period, the tools of professional men. There
were not many works of medicine, but a great many of law.
The people, too, required instruction in the ordinances they were

APPENDIX. 305

called upon to obey ; — and thus the Statutes, mostly written in
French, were translated and abridged by Rastell, our first law-
printer.

After all this rush of the press of England towards the diffu-
sion of existing knowledge, it began to assist in the production
of new works, but in very different directions. Much of the
poetry of the sixteenth century, which our press spread around,
will last for ever : its controversial divinity has, in great part,
perished. Each, however, was a natural supply, arising out of
the demand of the people ; as much as the chronicles, and
romances, and grammars were a natural supply; and as the
almanacs, and mysteries, and ballads, which the people also then
had, were a natural supply. Taken altogether, the activity of
the press of England, during the first period of our inquiry, was
very remarkable. Ames and Herbert have recorded the names
of 350 printers in England and Scotland, or of foreign printers
engaged in producing books for England, that flourished between
1471 and 1600. The same authors have recorded the titles (we
have counted with sufficient accuracy to make the assertion) of
nearly 10,000 distinct works printed amongst us during the same
period. Many of these works, however, were only single sheets ;
but, on the other hand, there are, doubtless, many not here regis-
tered. Dividing the total number of books printed during these
130 years, we find that the average number of distinct works
produced each year was 75.

When Leo X. gave a privilege, in 1553, to the second Aldus
for printing ' Varro,' the Pope required that the book should be
sold cheap. Cheapness in books is a relative term : it must
depend upon the probable number of purchasers. If ' Varro '
were likely to be extensively read, Aldus could afford to sell it
cheaply : if he counted only upon a small impression, it must of
necessity have been dear. The principle that chiefly determines
price, in the commerce of books, is the number of the purchasers.
It is sufficiently evident that, long after the invention of printing,
and its introduction into England, books were dear. In the
' Privy Purse Accounts of Elizabeth of York,' published by Sir
H. Nicolas, we find that, in 1505, twenty pence were paid for a
' Primer ' and a ' Psalter.' In 1505, twenty pence would have
bought half a load of barley, and were equal to six days' work of

X

306 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS.

a labourer. In 1516, ' Fitzherbert's Abridgment,' a large folio
law-book, then first published, was sold for forty shillings. At
that time, forty shillings would have bought three fat oxen.
Books gradually became cheaper, as the printers ventured to rely
upon a larger number of purchasers. The exclusive privileges
that were given to individuals for printing all sorts of books,
during the reigns of Henry VIII., Mary, and Elizabeth, — although
they were in accordance with the spirit of monopoly which cha-
racterised that age, and were often granted to prevent the spread
of books, — offer a proof that the market was not large enough to
enable the producers to incur the risk of competition. One with
another, 200 copies may be estimated to have been printed of
each book during the period we have been noticing ; we think
that proportion would have been quite adequate to the supply of
the limited number of readers, — to many of whom the power
of reading was a novelty, unsanctioned by the practice of their
forefathers.

II. The second period of the English press, from the accession
of James I. to the Eevolution, is, perhaps, all circumstances
considered, the least favourable to the diffusion of knowledge of
any period in our whole literary history. In the reign of the
first Stuart came an inundation of pedantry, which surrounded
the court with verbal criticism and solemn quibble :• — the people,
indeed, had their glorious dramatists, but Bacon was looked upon
as an impracticable dreamer. Controversy, too, began to be rife
in England ; and the spirit at last exploded in such a torrent of
civil and ecclesiastical violence in the reign of James's successor,
as left the many little leisure for the cultivation of their under-
standings. The press was absorbed by the productions of this
furious spirit. There is, in the British Museum, a collection of
2000 volumes of Tracts issued between the years 1640 and 1660,
the whole number of which several publications amounts to the
enormous quantity of 30,000. This most curious collection was
made by a bookseller of the name of Tomlinson, in the times
when the tracts were printed ; — was bargained for, but not
bought, by Charles II. ; — and was eventually bought by George
III., and presented by him to the British Museum. The number
of impressions of new books unconnected with controversial
subjects, printed during these stormy days, must have been

APPENDIX. 307

very small. Dr. Johnson has remarked that the nation, from
1623 to 1604, was satisfied with two editions of Shakspeare's
Plays, which, probably, together did not amount to a thousand
copies.

At the Restoration our national literature, with a very few
grand exceptions, put on the lowest garb in which literature can
be arrayed ; it was the toy of the king and his courtezans.
Charles II. and his followers brought hither the spirit of the
literary parasites of Louis XIV., with whom the great were
everything, the people nothing. Small, indeed, must have been
the consumption of books amongst those who

" Hated not learning worse than asp or toad,"

looking upon men of letters as the old monarchs looked upon
their jesters. Under such a state of things, Milton received
fifteen pounds for the copy of ' Paradise Lost ; ' and an Act
of Parliament was passed that only twenty printers should
practise their art in the kingdom. We see by a petition to
Parliament in 1666, that there were only 140 " working printers"
in London. They were quite enough to produce the gimcracks
of literature for the court.* Burton, who lived near these days,
has drawn a fearful picture of the abject condition of men of
learning, before they had a public to rely upon : — " Rhetoric only
serves them to curse their bad fortunes ; and many of them,
for want of means,, are driven to hard shift. From grasshoppers
they turn, humble-bees. r$nd wasps, plain parasites, and make
the Muses mules, to satisfy their hunger-starved paunches, and
get a meal's meat." This is the high and palmy state of men
of genius, which some amongst us are desirous of bringing back,
by redeeming literature from the contaminating touch of the
multitude. These persons must be ignorant that nearly all that
is glorious and enduring in our literature has been built upon
the demands of the people. Our dramatists were essentially
the ministers of taste, ay, and of knowledge, to the people ; and
so were our fine old divines. Who have perished — the verbal

* ' La letteratura era una chingaglieria per la corte.' — See an
able dissertation, by Count Pecchio, on the application of the
general laws of production to literary and scientific productions. —
Lugano, 1832.

x 2

308 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS.

pedants (we forget even their names), who were doing homage
to the first James as the Solomon of his age, or the Beaumonts
and Jonsons, who were living upon the breath of the mob's
applause at the Globe Theatre 1 Who are banished to utter
oblivion, — the Sedleys and Kochesters, who were exciting the
gross passions of the second Charles, or the Taylors and Souths,
who were pouring forth their fervid eloquence and their poignant
wit upon the vulgar many ?

At the fire of London, in 1666, the booksellers dwelling about
St. Paul's lost an immense stock of books in quires, amounting,
according to Evelyn, to 200,0002., which they were accustomed
to stow in the vaults of the metropolitan cathedral, and of other
neighbouring churches. At that time the people were beginning
to read again, and to think ; —and as new capital naturally
rushed in to replace the consumed stock of books, there was
considerable activity once more in printing. The laws regulating
the number of printers soon after fell into disuse, as they had
long fallen into contempt. We have before us a catalogue (the
first compiled in this country) of " all the books printed in
England since the dreadful fire, 1666, to the end of Trinity
Term, 1680," which catalogue is continued to 1685, year by
year. A great many — we may fairly say one-half— of these
books, are single sermons and tracts. The whole number of
books printed during the fourteen years from 1666 to 1680, we
ascertain, by counting, was 3550, of which 947 were divinity,
420 law, and 153 physic, — so that two-fifths of the whole were
professional books ; 397 were school books, and 253 on subjects
of geography and navigation, including maps. Taking the
average of these fourteen years, the total number of works pro-
duced yearly was 253 ; but deducting the reprints, pamphlets,
single sermons, and maps, we may fairly assume that the yearly
average of new books was much under 100. Of the number of
copies constituting an edition we have no record ; we apprehend
it must have been small, for the price of a book, as far as we
can ascertain it, was considerable. Eoger North, speaking of
those booksellers of his day who had the knack of getting up
volumes on temporary matters, says, " They crack their brains
to find out selling subjects, and keep hirelings in garrets, on
hard meat, to write and correct by the grate ; so puff up an

APPENDIX. 309

octavo to a sufficient thickness, and there is six shillings current
for an hour and a halPs reading." In a catalogue, with prices,
printed twenty-two years after the one we have just noticed, we
find that the ordinary cost of an octavo was five shillings.

III. We have arrived at the third stage of our rapid and
imperfect sketch — from the Kevolution to the accession of
George III.

This period will be ever memorable in our literary history for
the creation, in great part, of periodical literature. Till news-
papers, and magazines, and reviews, and cyclopaedias were estab-
lished, the people, even the middle classes, could not fairly be
said to have possessed themselves of the keys of knowledge.

The publication of intelligence began, as many of our readers
know, during the wars of Charles I. and his Parliament. But
the ' Mercuries ' of those days were little more than occasional
pamphlets. Burton speaks of a ' Pamphlet of News.' Before
the Revolution, there were several London papers, regulated,
however, by privileges and surveyors of the Press. Soon after
the beginning of the eighteenth century (1709), London had one
daily paper, fifteen three times a week, and one twice a week :
this was before a stamp-duty was imposed on papers. After the
stamp-duty in 1724, there were three daily papers, six weekly,
and ten three times a week. Provincial newspapers had been
established in several places at this period. The reign of Anne
also saw a new and most successful species of literature — the
issue of a periodical paper, which should contain something less
exciting and more conducive to a healthy state of the public
intellect, than the mere rumours of foreign wars or domestic
scandals. The ' Tatler,' ' Spectator,' ' Guardian,' and other
popular works, were, to the middle classes of those days, what
the ' Penny Knowledge' is to the humbler classes, and the
young of all classes, at the present day. We never heard that
the remnant of the old literary court-tinkers of the Stuarts
ventured to predict the downfall of English literature, because
the 'Spectator' was published at a penny ; or that the Tonsous
and Lintotts maintained that Pope could not produce them a
translation of Homer, because he had written in a penny
Guardian. They were wiser in their generation, and believed,
as an old French bookseller believed, or is said to have believed,

310 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS.

" Plus on lit, plus on lira — plus il faut, plus il faudra des
livres." *

The creation of another new species of literature in this
period, is to be ascribed to the strong good sense of a printer,
who saw that, even with their daily and weekly papers, the
middle classes were ill-supplied with miscellaneous information.
Cave, in this spirit, projected the ' Gentleman's Magazine.' He
offered a share in it to half the booksellers in London ; they one
and all rejected the project as absurd. They had not learnt,
even by the success of the ' Essayists,' to rely upon a large
number of purchasers. In 1731, Cave, at his own risk, pro-
duced the first magazine printed in England — the ' Gentleman's.'
Its success was so great, that in the following year the book-
sellers, who could not understand Cave's project till they knew
its value by experiment, set up a rival magazine, ' The London.'
In 1749, the first review, ' The Monthly,' was started ; and in
a few years was followed by ' The Critical.' It is not our pur-
pose to trace the history of our monthly reviews and magazines.
They did an immense deal for literature and the literary cha-
racter. They took the patronage of men of letters out of the
hands of the great and the fashionable, and confided it to the
people. They might not create poets and philosophers, but they
prevented kings and lords pretending to create them.

" Un Auguste peut aisement faire un Virgile,"

looked like a truism in the court of Louis X[V. ; it became a
bad joke when, relying upon the humble printer of the ' Gentle-
man's Magazine,' Johnson dared to describe "the patron and
the gaol " as the common eurses of the scholar. Johnson learnt
in the school of the people to depend upon the people, through
their interpreters, the booksellers, as the only patrons whose
resources would last beyond the hour of sunshine. He was in
the transition state from the patronage of the few to the
patronage of the many, and he therefore endured great privations.
But he clearly saw the time was coming, when the literary man

* ' The more people read the more they will read — the more
the world wants books the more they will want." — Histoire des
Franqais des divers e'tats, vol. vi., p. 121.

APPENDIX. 311

would find, in the extension of the demand for knowledge, the
broadest and surest foundation for his own reward as a labourer
in the vineyard of knowledge.

The periodical literature of the era we are speaking of swallowed
up a vast number of the pamphlets through which writers used
to communicate their thoughts to the world. Disputants in a
little circle found in the magazines a vent for their opinions,
theological, moral, political, and antiquarian. This circum-
stance, of course, greatly reduced the number of merely tempo-
rary books ; and it had thus the advantage of imparting to our
literature a more solid character. Making a proportionate de-
duction for the pamphlets inserted in the catalogues we have
already referred to, it appears to us, however, that the great
influx of periodical literature, although constituting a most im-
portant branch of literary commerce, had, in some degree, the
effect of narrowing the publication of new books ; and perhaps
wholesomely so. That the growth of periodical literature would
produce the incontestible effect of general knowledge, that of
causing the appetite to grow by what it feeds upon, we cannot
doubt; but the new body of readers that periodical literature
had won from the middle classes, might rather desire the old
solid dishes, than crave after hastily-produced novelties. Be
this as it may, the number of new books published in this period
was not large. We have before us a ' Complete Catalogue of
Modern Books published from the beginning of the century to
1756;' — from which " all pamphlets and other tracts" are ex-
cluded. We find that in these fifty-seven years, 5280 new
works appeared, which exhibits only an average of ninety-three
new works each year.

We are inclined to think that the numbers of an edition
printed had been increased ; for, however strange it may appear,
the general prices of the works in this catalogue are as low, if
not lower, than in a priced catalogue we also have of books
printed in the years 1702 and 1703. A quarto published in the
first half of the last century seems to have averaged from 10s.
to 12s. per volume ; an octavo, from 5s. to 6s. ; and a duodecimo
from 2s. Gd. to 3s. In the earlier catalogue we have mentioned,
pretty much the same prices exist : and yet an excise had been
laid upon paper ; the prices of authorship, even for the humblest

312 SHADOWS OF THE OLD BOOKSELLERS.

labours, were raised, at least, two hundred per cent, above the
prices of the time of John Dunton, who says " his great talent
lies at collection, and he will do it for you at six shillings a
sheet;"* and, more than all, the cost of the necessaries of life
was much advanced. We can only account for this upon the
principle, that the publishers of the first half of the eighteenth
century knew their trade, and, printing larger numbers, adapted
their prices to the extension of the market. They also, in many
cases, lessened their risk by publishing by subscription — a
practice now almost disreputable, but possessing great advan-
tages for the production of costly books. This was, in many
respects, the golden age for publishers, when large and certain
fortunes were made, — when there was not a great deal of a
gambling spirit in the business. Perhaps much of this pro-
ceeded from the publishers aiming less to produce novelty than
excellence — selling large impressions of few books, and not dis-
tracting the public with their noisy competition in the manu-
facture of new wares for the market of the hour. Publishers
thus grew into higher influence in society. They had long
ceased to carry their books to Bristol or Stourbridge fairs, or to
hawk them about the country in auctions for the unwary. The
trade of books had gone into regular commercial channels.

IV. The period from the accession of George III. to the close
of the eighteenth century, is marked by the rapid increase of
the demand for popular literature, rather than by any prominent
features of originality in literary production. Periodical literature
spread on every side ; newspapers, magazines, reviews, were
multiplied ; and the old system of selling books by hawkers was
extended to the rural districts, and small provincial towns. Of
the number books thus produced, the quality was indifferent,
with a few exceptions ; and the cost of these works was consider-
able. The principle, however, was then first developed, of
extending the market, by coming into it at regular intervals
with fractions of a book, so that the humblest, customer might
lay by each week in a savings-bank of knowledge. This was
an important step, which has produced great effects, but which
is even now capable of a much more universal application than

* ' Life and Errors,' vol. i. p. 181.

APPENDIX. 313

it has ever yet received. Smollett's 'History of England' was
one of the most successful number-books ; it sold to the extent
of 20,000 copies.

We may exhibit the rapid growth of the publication of new
books, by examining the catalogues of the latter part of the
eighteenth century, passing over the earlier years of the reign of
George III. In the ' Modern Catalogue of Books,' from 1792
to the end of 1802, eleven years, we find that 4096 new works
were published, exclusive of reprints not altered in price, and
also exclusive of pamphlets : deducting one-fifth for reprints, we
have an average of 372 new books per year. This is a prodigious
stride beyond the average of 93 per year of the previous period.
But we are not sure that our literature was in a more healthy
condition. From some cause or other, the selling price of
books had increased, in most cases 50 per cent., in others, 100
per cent. The 2s. Gd. duodecimo had become 4s. ; the 6s.
octavo, 10s. Qd. ; and the 12s. quarto IL Is. It would appear
from this that the exclusive market was principally sought for
new books ; that the publishers of novelties did not rely upon
the increasing number of readers ; and that the periodical works
constituted the principal supply of the many. The aggregate
increase of the commerce in books must, however, have become
enormous, when compared with the previous fifty years ; and
the effect was highly beneficial to the literary character. The
age of patronage was gone.

V. This modern era is still more remarkable for an extended
commerce in books.

The number of new publications issued from 1800 to 1827,
including reprints altered in size or price, but exclusive of
pamphlets, was, according to the London Catalogue, 19,860.
Deducting one-fifth for the reprints, we have 15,888 new books
in twenty-seven years, — showing an average of 588 new books
per year, — being an increase of 216 per year over the last eleven
years of the previous century. Books, however, were still rising
in price. The 4s. duodecimo of the former period became 6s., or
was converted into a small 8vo. at 10s. 6d. ; the 10s. Qd. octavo
became 12s. or 14s., and the guinea quarto very commonly two
guineas. Here, we think, was still an evidence that the new
books were for an exclusive market, whether of individual custo-

314 APPENDIX.

mers or circulating libraries. Circulating libraries and reading
societies did a vast deal for literary production ; they rendered
the demand to a considerable degree certain ; but they Avould
have done a great deal more if prices had not been so extrava-
gantly raised. The libraries would have taken duplicates and
triplicates instead of single copies : the publisher and author
would have been paid as well, and the public would have been
better supplied. The publishers of new books did not rely for a
demand upon a great body of purchasers. For the many, how-
ever, the periodical works went on largely increasing, and their
quality was decidedly improved.

( 315 )

INDEX.

Addison, 62, 67, 72, 79, 100, 103,

117, 118.
Aikin, J., 272.
Akenside, 256.
Amory, Thomas, 110.
Arbuthnot, 62.
Arnold, Dr., 173.
Associated Publishers of the first

and second editions of Johnson's

Poets, 280.

Atterbury, Francis, 39, 58, 89.
Aylmer, Brabazon, 57.

Bage, Robert, 168.
Baker, R. WM 64.
BALDWIN*, ROBEBT, 260, 2G1.
Ballard, Edward, 40, 269.
Barbauld, Mrs., 132, 137.
Barber, John, 101, 174.
Barker, Christopher, 9, 22.
Barlow, Bishop, 39.
Bartolozzi, 297.
Baskett, 13.
Bathoe, 165.
Bathurst, Lord, 120.
Bauldwyn, William, 260.
Becket and De Hondt, 269.
BECKET, THOMAS, 269-272.
BELL, JOHN, 250, 256, 276.
Bennet, Thomas, 39.
Benson, Dr., 262.
Bentley, Dr., 215.
Berkley, Earl of, 72.
Bewick, Thomas, 243.

CHATTERTON.

Bickerstaff, Isaac, 45.
Blackmore, 257.
Blackstone, 224.
Bolingbroke, Lord, 211, 217.
Boswell, 154, 155, 200, 201, 202,

216, 231, 243, 251, 253.
Bradshaigh, Lady, 137.
Brooke, Henry, 237, 243.
Brown, Dr. John, 209.
Browne, Moses, 179, 180.
, William, 254, 257.

Bryant, Jacob, 255.
Burke, Edmund, 211, 258.
Burlington, Earl of, 105, 120.
Burton, J. H., 182, 220.

CADELL, THOMAS, 124, 223, 255,

257.

Calprenede, M. de la, 84.
Cambridge, R. O., 204.
Campbell, Dr. John, 253.

, Dr. Thomas, 264.

Canning, George, 234.

Carew, 257.

Carlisle, Earl of, 69.

Carnan, Thomas, 244.

Carruthers, Robert, 105, 120.

CAVE, EDWABD, 171-182, 195.

Cervantes, 278.

Chalmers, 236.

Chapone, Mrs., 146.

CHAPTEB COFFEE-HOUSE,THE, 247,

262.
Chatterton, Thomas, 271.

316

INDEX.

CHAUCER.

Chaucer, Geoffrey, 116, 257.
Chesterfield, Lord, 200, 203, 204,

205.

Chiswell, Bichard, 39.
Churchill, Awnsham and John,

39.

, Charles, 247, 252, 254.

Gibber, Colley, 146.
Clarke, Jeremiah, 59.

, John, 5.

Clavel, Robert, 39.

Clifton, Francis, 88.

Cobham, 69.

Coleridge, S. T., 251.

Colman, George, 229, 247, 277.

Collins, 173,

Congreve, 52, 55, 62, 67, 104.

COOK, 277.

Cowper, William, 247, 272-276.

Cox, Captain, 238.

, T., 92.

Craik, Professor, 270.
Crouch, Richard, 41,
Cunningham, Peter, 3, 245.
CCELL, EDMUND, 109-124, 197.

Daniel, Samuel, 257.
Darby, Mr., 94.

Dartineuf, Charles, 72, 190, 192.
Darwin, 272.

Davies, Sir John, 254, 257.
DAVIES, THOMAS, 201, 252-255.
Day, Thomas, 243.
Defoe, Daniel, 92.
Defreval, M., 143, 146.
De Morgan, A., 239.
Dennis, 73, 103, 113. '
Deyverdun, M., 255.
Dibdin, Dr., 42, 169, 238, 296.
Dickens, Charles, 278.
Diderot, 137.
Dilly, Charles, 251, 252.
DILLY, EDWARD, 225, 250-252
256.

D'Israeli, Isaac, 120, 142.
Dodd, Dr., 264.
Dodsley, James, 202, 212, 255.
DODSLET, ROBERT, 94, 189-213,

260.

Donaldson, Alexander, 218.
Donne, 257.
Donnellan, Mrs., 138.
Doolittle, Rev. Thomas, 28.
Dorset, Lord, 62, 257.
Drayton, 257.
Drummond, ib.
Dryden, 52, 53, 58, 62, 67, 103,

277.

Duick, John, 180.
Duke, Richard, 257.
DUNTON, JOHN, 4, 24-47, 53, 76,

91, 104, 108, 115, 129, 173.
Durfey, Thomas, 104, 115.

Edwards, Thomas, 139, 150.
ELMSLEY, PETER, 226, 255-258.
Erskine, Lord, 245.
EVANS, THOMAS, 237, 258-259.
Exshaw, "Wilson and Saunders,
152.

Falconer, William, 268.

Farmer, Dr., 298.

Farquhar, 277.

Fielding, Henry, 124, 132, 137,

139, 217, 237.
Flockton, Mr., 160.
Foote, Samuel, 262.
Forster, John, 258.
Franklin, Benjamin, 86.
Fraser, Mr., Licenser, 34.

GARDINER, WILLIAM, 296-299.

Garrick, David, 122, 178, 210.

Garth, Dr., 62, 67.

Gascoigne, 257.

Gay, Mr., 113.

GENT, THOMAS, 76-99, 129, 154.

INDEX.

317

Gibbon, 124, 224, 227, 229, 255.
Gilliver, Lawton, 121.
Goldsmith, 185, 201, 236, 242,

243, 259, 265, 266.
Goodwin, William, 41.
Gordon, Alexander, 214, 216.
Granville, Lord, 62.
Gray, 256.

Green, Matthew, 201.
Griffiths and Farran, 242.
GRIFFITHS, EALPH, 184-188.
Gutch, Vander, 66.
Guy, Alice, 82.
GUY, THOMAS, 3-23, 40.

Habington, 257.

Halifax, Earl of, 32, 62.

Hamilton, Archibald, 184, 231.

Harris, Benjamin, 38, 41.

HARRISON, 278, 279.

Hawkesworth, 247.

Hawkins, Sir John, 145, 175, 179,

180.

Hayley, 229.
Headley, Henry, 257.
Hector, Mr., 155.
Heidegger, Count, 60.
Herring, Dr., 220.
Herringman, Mr., 52.
Herschel, Sir John, 132.
Hesketh, Lady, 276.
Hill, Aaron, 130.
Hitch, Mr., 203.
Hodges, Sir James, 238.
Holyock, Rev. Mr., 172.
Hoole, John, 78.
Hume, David, 124, 182, 183,

226.

Hunt, Leigh, 277.
Hurd, Rev. Richard, 263.
HUTTON, WILLIAM, 154-170, 190.

JOHNSON, JOSEPH, 272-276.
, Michael, 154, 156.

Johnson, Samuel, 78, 143, 154,
155, 163, 171 , 177, 187, 196, 200,
202, 203, 205, 217, 224, 229,
231, 242, 251, 252, 257, 267, 270.

Jones, Giles, 236.
— , Griffith, 236, 241.

Katt, Christopher, 63, 72.
KIT-CAT CLUB, 52-72, 100.
Knapton, Mr., 39, 203,
Kneller, Sir Godfrey, 57, 65.
Knowles, Mrs., 267.

Lackington, Allen and Co., 283.

, George, 284.

LACKINGTON, JAMES, 282-296.
Lane, William, 293.
Laneham, Robert, 153.
Larkin, Mr., 38.
Lavington, George, Bishop of

Exeter, 263.
Layer, Christopher, 95.
Lee, Mr., 35.
Leland, Dr., 151.
Lenox, Charlotte, 142.
Lewis, Mr., 103.
LINTOTT, BERNARD, 75, 103-109,

113, 118.

, Henry, 116.

Lloyd, Robert, 247.

Locke, 55.

Lombe, Sir Thomas, 157.

London, William, 49.

LONGMAN, THOMAS, 203, 260.

Lovelace, 257.

Lowther, Hon. Mrs., 191.

Luttrfll, Narcissus, 53.

Lyttelton, Lord, 204, 268.

Maitland, William, 4.
Mallet, David, 217, 256.
Marlborough, Duke of, 69.
Mason, Rev. William, 266.

318

INDEX.

Mathias.T. J.,259, 271.

Matthews, John, 90.

Mawman, Joseph, 209.

Middleton, Dr. Conyers, 215
216.

Midwinter, Mr., 77, 81.

MILLAR, ANDREW, 124, 203, 214-
223, 260, 269.

Miller, Hugh, 207.

, Thomas, 169.

, William, 41.

Millington, Edward, 42.

Milton, 50, 57, 58, 102.

Mist, Mr., 90.

Mohun, Lord, 72.

Montague, Charles, Earl of Hali-
fax, 55, 62, 70.

Moore, Edward, 204.

More, Hannah, 265.

Morphew, John, 45.

Motteux, 278.

MURRAY, JOHN, 266-269.

Negus, Samuel, 95, 96.
Newbery and Harris, 242.
Newbery, Francis, 243, 244.
NEWBERY, JOHN, 233-246, 269.
Newton, Eev. John, 272-275.
Nichols, J. B., 277, 293, 298.
, John, 16, 86, 106, 109, 156,

169, 216, 236, 244, 249, 254,

259, 263.

Nicholson, John, 165, 166, 167.
Norris, Rev. Dr. John, 31.
North, Lord, 245.
, Koger, 36, 259.

Onslow, Mr. Speaker, 130.
Osborne, Thomas, 122, 130, 260.
Otway, 51.
Oxford, Earl of, 120, 193.

Parkhurst, Thomas, 39.

PAYNE, THOMAS, 259-260.

Pepys, Samuel, .16, 50.

Percy, Dr., 190, 237, 238.

Phillips, Sir Richard, 60, 251.

Pilkington, Mrs., 146.

Pomfret, 257.

Pope, Alexander, 72, 94, 103, 106,

109, 113, 117, 121, 192, 197,

202.

Porny, M., 282.
Porter, Richard, 157.
Printing Conger, 249.
Prior, 70, 100.

Radnor, Lord, 197.

Ratcliffe, John, 160.

Reed, Isaac, 199.

Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 142, 188,

251.
RICHARDSON, SAMUEL, 97, 125-

153.

, Dr., 215.

Richmond, Duke of, 214, 215.
Ridpath, Mr., 46.
Ritson, Joseph, 190, 237.
RIVINGTON, JOHN, 130, 262-266.
Roberts, J., 113.
Robertson, Dr., 124, 224, 226.
Robinson, Jacob, 184.
•, Messrs., 282.

Rochester, Bishop of, 89.
Rogers, William, 41.
Roscoe, William, 120.
Rousseau, 137.
Rowe, 52.
Roxburgh, Duke of, 238.

Sacheverel, Dr., 81.
Sackville, Thomas, 260.
Sandby, Mr., 268.
Sault, Richard, 31.
•Schiavonetti, 297.
Scot, Robert, 49, 259.
Scott, Sir Walter, 208, 240.

INDEX.

319

Scudery, Mademoiselle, 84.
Settle, Elkanab, 62.
Skebbeare, Dr., 185.
Shenstone, 135, 206, 209.
Sherlock, Bishop of Salisbury,

196.

, Martin, 137.

Shrewsbury, Mr., 38.
Simmons. Samuel, 57, 58.
Singer, S. W., 115, 117.
Skelton, Kev. Phillip, 150.
Smith, Adam, 224.
Smollett, 222.
Somers, John, 58.
Somerset, Duke of, 66.
South, Dr., 39.
Southey, 76, 257.
Sowles, Mrs. Tacy, 41.
Spence, Rev. Joseph, 73, 103, 197,

206, 213.
Spenser, 257.
Sprat, Thomas, 257.
Steele, Richard, 45, 62, 67, 100.
Stephen, Sir James, 265.
Stephens, Robert, 34.
Stepney, George, 257.
Sterne, 132, 140, 269.
Stinstra, Rev. J., 125, 135.
Stone, Dr., 220.
Stothard, 278.

STRAHAN, WILLIAM, 214, 223-232.
Surrey, Lord, 257.
Swalle, Mr., 52.
Swift, Jonathan, 32, 45, 72, 100,

113, 117, 149, 192.

Tate, STahum, 51.
Taylor, William, 91.
Temple, Sir William, 32, 45.
Thackeray, W. M., 278.
Theobald, Lewis, 119.
Thomson, James, 124, 214, 216,

217, 277.
Thornton, Bonnel, 247.

WHITEHEAD.

Thornton, John, 272.

Thorpe, Thomas, 76.

Thurlow, Lord, 264.

TickeU, Thomas, 117.

TomkiBs, Mr., 297.

TONSON, JACOB, 48-75, 86, 87, 106,

117, 118, 122, 216, 260.
Tonson, Jacob, jun., 100.
-, Richard, 67.

TONSONS, THE, 100-104.
Toovey, 147.
Townshend, Lord, 95.
Trusler, Dr., 243.
Turner, J., 239.
Tyrwhitt, Thomas, 117.

Unwin, Rev. Mr., 275.
Urry, John, 116.

Vanbrugh, 67.
Vesey, John, 90.

Wakefield, Gilbert, 276.
Walpole, Horace, 71, 204, 209,

271.

— , Sir Robert, 21.
Walsh, Joseph, 257.
Walwyn, Herbert, 41.
Wanley, Humphrey, 115.
Warburton, Dr., 197.
Ward, Ned, 62.
Warren, Mr., 155, 163.
Warton, Joseph, 197.
Watkins, Mr., 180.
Watts, John, 86, 97, 117.
Webb, Foster, 180.
Wellington, Mr., 38.
Wesley, John, 29, 262, 285.

— , Samuel, 29, 31.
Wetherell, Dr., 224.
Wharton, Duke of, 129.
White, Mr., 82.

, Rev. Henry, 155.

Whitehead, Paul, 196, 214.

320

INDEX.

WHITEFIELD.

Wliitefield, George, 262.
Wilberforce, Samuel, 265.
Wilcot, Mr., 86.
Wilcox, Mr., 177.
Wilde, John, 129.
Wilkea, John, 252.
Wilkins, Mr., 85, 95.
William, Duke of Cumberland,
239.

Willis, Browne, 109.
Wingrave, Francis, 282.
Woodfall, Henry, 94, 96.
Wordsworth, 250.
Wyat, 257.

Yalden, Thomas, 257.
Young, Edward, 118, 137, 146.
256.

THE END.

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